Wish You Were Here
by Tassos
Summary: When the FBI's BAU follow a serial killer to Haven, Maine, they find that murder and mystery are a lot more complicated in the unassuming sea-side town. The local cops don't want them there, the crime scenes don't make sense, and it doesn't take long for them to get in over their heads.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: On the Haven side, this is set in a nebulous post-season 4 that diverges from canon so it ignores season 5. For Criminal Minds this is set somewhere in the middle of season 7, because I like Emily. Spoilers for everything through those seasons.

* * *

><p>"Did she just say Haven?"<p>

Hotch glanced up from the speaker phone in the middle of the conference room they were borrowing. "Yes, she did. Garcia, Detective Fowler just stepped in. Could you repeat that?"

"The Maine Highway Patrol just found an abandoned car and a giant pool of blood soaked into the ground on the coast road, halfway between Camden and Haven. It looks like your killer is on the move."

Hotch watched Fowler set his hands on his hips and take in a deep breath with a frown. He was a big man and his frame filled the doorway. Unease didn't look comfortable on his face. "What is it, Detective?"

"I thought you said he was local? That he was picking out his favorite spots in town," said Fowler, gesturing at the blown up pictures of the dumpsites tacked to the board.

Morgan, who stood across the table, straightened up. "Camden's a small town. If he feels like we're getting close, he could be feeling pressure to run," he said. "If he knows Haven at all, he might be setting up shop all over again."

"God help him." Fowler ran a hand over his face. It was an odd sentiment, but Hotch barely had time to exchange a worried look with Morgan before Fowler clapped his hands together and said, "That's it then, you're out of here after him?"

"You don't want to come with us?" Hotch asked sharply. Letting go of a serial killer was usually the last thing a local cop wanted after three missing persons turned into three bodies, let alone one that wasn't arguably out of his jurisdiction yet.

"Look, I got enough to deal with here - the families, everyone scared out of their minds." Fowler rubbed his hand over his chin. "God knows I want this guy as bad as any of those parents. But if this is anywhere emnear/emHaven, their chief will want the case, and I'm not inclined to fight him for it. My chief wouldn't let me if I wanted to."

"Territorial?"

"You could say that," Fowler nodded. "But they're good cops. Though you'll want your best talker on the phone when you talk to Wuornos, or the new guy, whatshisname, Hendrickson."

"They don't like outsiders," Hotch surmised. That could be a problem, but he'd put JJ on it and see if she could get them an invitation. This case was a nasty one, and worse, they had little in the way of physical evidence to narrow down either the search area or the profile. If their unsub was moving to a new town, they would have even less to go on.

"Understatement." Fowler nodded emphatically. "They take care of their own in Haven."

"How so?"

Fowler shrugged. "Nothing so overt, you know? Always polite while you're talking to a brick wall. But the number of gas leaks they have in that town? You hear things, crazy things, but it doesn't much spillover, so."

So Camden PD let sleeping dogs lie.

"Thanks for the tip," Morgan said, crossing his arms and sending Hotch a worried glance. Hotch shared his concern, but they would deal with it when they got there.

As Fowler left, Hotch turned back to the phone. "Garcia, I need everything you've got on Haven, Maine."

* * *

><p>Maine's coastal road was a beautiful drive. JJ had to keep reminding herself to keep her eyes on the road as the sea stretched out in a gorgeous blue-grey from the rugged cliffs that stretched as far as the eye could sea. Picturesque little houses dotted the curves, and in the distance a tiny lighthouse stuck out into the water.<p>

Hotch had split the team to cover their bases. Rossi and Reid were staying in Camden for the time being to finish following up with local photographers while Prentiss and Morgan went to check out the new kill site with the State Police. Hotch and JJ were on their way to brief the local Haven police, see if they couldn't start out on the right foot.

Detective Fowler was kind enough to call ahead for them, and on the way Garcia briefed them on what she'd found so far.

"Haven is a lot like Camden," she began, her voice coming out small on Hotch's phone in the cup holder. "Small coastal town, same cute houses and quaint downtown. The biggest industries are fishing and tourism. They have two high schools, two little league teams, three banks and way more people moving in and out of town than anywhere else in the state."

"Deaths?" Hotch asked.

"Higher than normal, but they're mostly from natural causes or accidents. They either have really bad infrastructure or some seriously atrocious geology - lots of hunting accidents and gas leaks. Like that doesn't sound fishy. And my favorite: all the property damage done about a year ago? Meteors. Tell me that's not weird."

"A meteor on the ground that didn't make national headlines?" JJ glanced from the road to Hotch.

"The number of conspiracy theory websites about Haven is unnerving," Garcia added.

"Let's save the conspiracies for after we catch the unsub," Hotch said. "Right now we need to make sure that if our killer does come here, we're not shut out by the local police."

"I'll start running the current profile, but I'm warning you now, it's gonna be like Camden - tourist season is still going strong," Garcia said and signed off.

JJ blew out a breath and watched the scenery go by. "If Haven is crawling with people wearing tin hats, I might have to go the other way on idyllic vacation spots."

"Might?" Hotch raised his eyebrows at her.

"There are other coastal towns. They can't all be bad."

"I'm sure Haven has a rich history to go with the conspiracies. Maybe a shipwreck or three," said Hotch.

"Henry would love that. Pirates are a magic word these days," said JJ. "What about you? I haven't heard you weigh in on the vacation ratings."

Hotch smiled. "I don't have anything so complicated as Reid's system. And like you, a completely different set of priorities."

"So?" JJ prodded when he didn't go on.

Hotch spared a glance for the ocean. "I'm still deciding."

For every case they'd been on, JJ understood. It was hard to reconcile a place you associated with death with the joy and freedom of a week away from home.

* * *

><p>The Haven police department was located downtown in a red brick building that had probably been there since the twenties. The foyer turned onto an open plan room, which had windowed offices on each wall and a hallway leading to the back. Every person in the room stopped what they were doing and stared when the Hotch and JJ walked in.<p>

Hotch didn't let it unnerve him and just asked the closest officer to see the chief.

A tall barrel-chested man in a button down shirt and a bullet-proof vest came out of one of the offices.

"Dwight Hendrickson, Chief of Police," he introduced himself, shaking Hotch's hand with a quick, firm grip.

"Agent Hotchner. This is Agent Jareau. Detective Fowler in Camden said he spoke to you."

"He did," Hendrickson nodded, giving them a once over that didn't seem too impressed. "He said his serial killer was now my serial killer. I'm thrilled."

If the situation weren't so dire, Hotch might have cracked a smile at Hendrickson's dry delivery. As it was he was all too aware of every person in the office leaning closer to hear what they were saying. To his credit Hendrickson noticed too.

"Let's talk in my office," he said. "Laverne, you know where Nathan and Audrey are?" he called to a non-uniformed black woman sitting at a desk with a phone and the radio. She was filling in a crossword and didn't look up, only raised a hand and waved them off.

"I sent 'em to that piece of highway the State Police called in, honey. Sounded like they should get there sooner than later." She finally glanced up and gave Hendrickson what could only be termed a grandmotherly don't-cross-me look over the top of her glasses.

Hendrickson's head canted, annoyed - the whole thing news to him - and then melted into a sigh. He raised his eyebrows at Hotch and JJ.

"Our people are headed there too," Hotch answered the unasked question.

"All right. Laverne," he turned to her again. "Let them know the FBI are on their way."

"You got it, sugar," said Laverne peaceably, finally setting down her crossword. Hendrickson sighed again but didn't comment as she brought the radio to life. He led JJ and Hotch in to his office. They exchanged a look behind his back, neither of them missing the subtle undercurrents of an employee who thought best. Amused, Hotch didn't think it meant anything more than a small town police department being a quirky small town police department. Getting this done was certainly going to be interesting.

"Excuse me," JJ said as Hendrickson closed the door, the blinds rattling. "I gotta ask. Is there something we should know about?" She indicated Hendrickson's vest.

Hendrickson didn't even blink, as if wearing a vest in the middle of a police station was no big deal. "Can't be too careful," he said, ushering them toward the chairs in front of his desk. "Welcome to Haven."

* * *

><p>"The sea here is beautiful, I'll give you that." Prentiss cast her eye to the horizon. The ocean stretched out below them, the coastal cliffs dotted with houses, and a lighthouse sticking out in the water like a lone sentinel. Across the water, she could just make out the hazy outline of an island before it faded into the deepening afternoon sky.<p>

"But?" Morgan raised his eyebrows at her, coming over from talking with the highway patrolman who was guarding the site.

"But I still don't get the fishing thing."

"It's just you, the ocean, and a couple of beers."

"That sounds so boring to me."

"Says the woman who would lie down for hours with cucumbers on her eyes," Morgan teased, grinning.

"I'm not saying you can't have a good time. I just don't get the appeal," Prentiss raised her hands up in her defense. She understood that they all sought relaxation in different ways.

"When this is done, we should go out on the water before we leave," Morgan suggested, though they both knew the likelihood of that happening was low. They'd have too much to do and probably no more energy to do it. Already, they'd been in Maine nearly a week - a very frustrating week with no real breaks in the case. The brown stain, three feet across, that dampened the dirt of the overlook was the first change in their unsub's MO, and it was the best lead they had had. She only hoped he'd made a mistake this time.

"I'll go if you can convince Reid to go," she said, squatting beside Morgan as they both inspected the ground.

The stain was blood. Off to the side a half dozen wire flagpoles marked spatter or potential signs of a struggle, but the footprints were smeared and she doubted they'd find anything useful from them.

"It's like the other sites," Prentiss said, her finger sketching the outline of the puddle. "The victim lost enough blood to bleed out. The unsub stuck to the asphalt or obscured his tracks."

"The officer said it was called in from a call box almost two hours ago. No one was here when he showed up."

"Any way to figure out how long the blood's been drying here?"

Morgan shook his head, and the sound of another car pulling up - a blue Ford bronco - saved him from answering.

A man and a woman got out of the car. Both wore guns and badges that were visible on their belts as they approached. The man waved to the highway patrolman and went in that direction, while the woman came over to them.

"Wow. They weren't kidding. That's a whole lot of blood," she said staring at the ground before acknowledging Morgan and Prentiss. "Who are you?" she asked just as flatly, eyes narrowed at them even as they flickered to the FBI badges they wore in plain sight.

Prentiss pushed down her first reaction, but couldn't help sending Morgan a quick, can-you-belive-her look - and that was before she raised an eyebrow at the crappy highlight job and more eyeliner than Johnny Depp.

"Agent Emily Prentiss, FBI." She held out her hand which the cop took gingerly, though her grip was firm.

"Agent Derek Morgan."

"Audrey Parker, Haven PD. That's my partner, Nathan Wuornos." She nodded to the other cop who glanced over when he heard his name. "They didn't tell us this rated the FBI," she said neutrally, but in her face Prentiss read between the lines just fine. They weren't wanted, even if Parker was too professional to say it out loud.

Her partner, Wuornos, strolled over, notebook in hand. He and Parker traded a look before he shook hands and squatted down by the blood stain.

"What's the FBI doing out here?" he asked, not looking up, as suspicious as his partner. And, wow, Fowler hadn't been kidding about them not liking outsiders.

But keeping in mind his friendly warning, as well as Parker's continued narrow stare, Prentiss decided to ignore the distinct cold shoulder and just roll with it.

"We're with the Behavior Analysis Unit. We've been working a serial murder case in Camden - three other crime scenes where the victims were murdered, just like this," she said.

"All outdoors, all near rocks. No weapons, no usable forensics, not many signs of a struggle," Morgan listed off the rest.

"No body?" Wuornos turned this time, one knee touching the ground for balance just outside the edge of the stain. Prentiss wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not; he kept his features still and serious, which was hard to get a read off of. The look Morgan gave her said much the same. The stoic type she supposed.

"They get dumped somewhere else," Morgan replied. "In Camden, the kill sites were all over town in nice secluded spots. None of them overlooked the ocean. Is this place significant in any way?"

"Not that I know of," said Wuornos, neutrally.

"Not a bad thing to check, though." Parker's eyes were drawn to the stain, the hostility dropping in favor of the evidence before her. "Is that more blood over there?" She pointed to the thin arc of blood that was probably from the first slice across the neck.

Taking it as a sign of a truce, Prentiss went over what they saw here - similar to what they had found in Camden. "It's a calculated kill, but very bloody. There's a limited amount spatter so he either covers up the initial arterial spray if there is any, or angles the body so it all goes in the same place on the ground. Either way the victim bleeds out in minutes. We had one trace of a body lying in the blood pool at the first site - an imprint in the soil - but the lack at the second and third and now here suggests that he's taking more precautions."

"Do you know who the victim is?"

"Not yet," said Morgan. "We matched the last three to missing persons cases. Verified with a DNA comparison of the blood to family. That's why we're in town."

"To see who in Haven might be missing," Parker finished the thought, her voice gone serious. She and Wuornos traded another long look with each other.

"Know of anyone?"

"There's a couple open cases."

Wuornos was interrupted by the squawk of the radio in the bronco.

"Nathan, honey, you or Audrey there?"

Parker turned and stared for a second before swinging back around, her nose scrunching. "I bet that's about you," she said, then went to answer it.

While she did, Wuornos gave Morgan and Prentiss a dead-eyed stare as he stood up, arms crossing, and here it was, the inevitable pissing contest. Prentiss was grateful they didn't have to do this for every case they took, but it was so annoying when there was that one recalcitrant cop who was dead set on doing things emhis/em way. It never ended well.

"Look," Morgan started.

"You just want to help," Wuornos finished, smiling tightly. "I know. It's your case, it's jumped towns. . . But we can take it from here." And even though Prentiss was expecting it - and her first reaction was that, no, they couldn't, they weren't equipped - something about the way Wuornos said it, was like it was an offer rather than a warning.

"No offense," Morgan said for the both of them, while Prentiss tried to get a read off this local cop who sounded . . . tired, "but this guy's not pretty and he's not leaving a lot of clues. You're going to need all the help you can get."

Wuornos actually cracked a smile at that, terse and cynical. "We always do."

Parker returned, nodding back toward the truck. "Their boss is talking with Dwight right now. The crime scene team is on their way."

"So that's that then," said Wuornos.

"Hey," Prentiss said, "we're all on the same team here. We just want to help catch the killer."

"Yeah," Parker said, deadpan. She swung toward Wuornos again with her crossed arms mirroring his, the pair of them a matched set. "A serial killer in Haven. This is going to be fun."

* * *

><p>Morgan and Prentiss arrived with Hendrickson's detectives not long after Hotch got off the phone updating Rossi. One of the other officers had just dropped off the missing persons files to JJ while Hendrickson was after someone to round up some more chairs so they had space to work in the common area of the station. It wasn't Hotch's first choice, where they'd be the center of attention, but he preferred it to the interrogation room the chief had offered them. He was just glad they weren't being shut out.<p>

Hendrickson made the introductions and they all moved to his office to talk.

"Eddie and Bob are still out there collecting evidence," Detective Wuornos reported, taking a spot by the window with his partner. Morgan and Prentiss gravitated to the other side of the room.

"What were your impressions?" Hotch asked, including the detectives in his question.

"It looked like the last two in Camden," Morgan said. "Brutal but controlled. Lots of blood, but I doubt we're going to get much more from there."

"Where have you been finding the bodies?" Parker asked.

"They haven't," Hendrickson answered for Hotch, handing Detective Parker the photocopies they'd brought from Camden.

"The Camden PD received postcards of local tourist attractions with the bodies displayed," Hotch said. "It's part of the pathology, showing off the kills and desecrating the town spots best known for their beauty. It's also a very confident move. He doesn't think we'll catch him."

"Our current profile is that we're looking for a white male, in his late 20s or early 30s," said JJ. "He took his victims during the day, so he blends in and is socially conforming, possibly an alpha male personality, which would explain his confidence. We think he's approaching them as a tourist, maybe at a local hot spot after work where the two could meet."

"The unsub is still highly functioning, and probably doesn't trip their stalker meter," Morgan added. "He's also smart. He's using forensic countermeasures and we haven't found a trace of the bodies at any of the sites where they were displayed."

"Unsub?" Wuornos frowned at the term.

"Unknown subject," Prentiss said. "We call our killer that so we don't introduce any bias into our profile."

"Does it work?" Wournos asked. He took the photocopy next, frowning.

"Most of the time," said Prentiss.

While they studied the bodies in the copies of the postcards, Hotch took a moment to study their new colleagues. They were both dressed informally, in jeans and jackets for the late summer weather that included a constant breeze off the sea. Parker made a face when she first looked at the photocopy, but it soon settled into a concentrated and somewhat sad expression. Wuornos didn't flinch at the photos, his face smooth and unreadable. But when he looked up to ask his next question, his eyes were sharp.

"You think Erica Rosen is the victim?" he said.

"Yes," said JJ, a bit of a surprise in her voice, but she quickly recovered. "I guess you don't have that many missing persons," she said.

"It's really only one in the last week, since Beattie called in the other three," said Parker. "The harbormaster. She already contacted the Coast Guard about their boat."

"The file says you two did the follow up?" JJ said.

"Her parents came in two days ago when she didn't show up for work," Wuornos nodded. "She had her own place, lived alone, and, from the look of it, didn't make it home Sunday night. We didn't get any leads. No one saw anything out of the ordinary."

"So she's been missing for two days." Prentiss blew out a breath, glancing out the window back toward the rest of the station. "That fits our timeline. I'm surprised her parents aren't here beating down your door."

"They wouldn't. They're at the church. Candlelight vigil started yesterday," said Parker, her tone slightly mocking.

"Hey, people deal with grief in different ways," Morgan chided.

"The Good Shepherd?" Hendrickson asked, but it sounded like he was hoping it wasn't.

"That's the one." More undercurrents threaded through Parker's voice, and Hendrickson's muttered "crap" only confirmed it.

"What does that mean?" Hotch asked sharply, holding out a hand out to stop Morgan from jumping in. "Why are you worried about the church vigil?"

There was a long look between the three local cops that ended when Wuornos said, "You want to field that one, chief?"

Hendrickson looked like he didn't, but went ahead anyway. "The parishioners at the Good Shepherd Church can be proactive in going after justice," he said, "whether or not it's actually justice. They're a fire and brimstone church."

"That have anything to do with the meteor shower that happened a year ago?" asked JJ.

"No, that got a different group in town all riled up," Wuornos said with little humor. "The old reverend at the church was belligerent going back thirty years, and the new pastor isn't shaping up much better."

"He's young," said Parker, and Hotch couldn't tell if she meant that as a good or bad thing, and from the look her partner shot her, he didn't either.

"We'll handle the interviews then. It might be better coming from an outside source," Hotch said. He got no objections.

"I doubt you'll have much luck tonight," Hendrickson said. "Better wait till morning. We'll have the crime scene photos by then."

Hotch nodded and made the executive decision to call it a day. They had until the mail arrived to know for certain whether or not their unsub had moved to Haven. Hotch wanted them all to be fresh for tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the oddest thing Morgan had seen at a local police station. As a nice gesture, JJ and Prentiss had picked up two extra black coffees from one of the local bakeries when they grabbed breakfast for the team and given them to Parker and Wuornos, who were in bright and early and clearly on their second round. Parker had intercepted the one JJ tried to pass to Wuornos, taken a sip, and told him, "wait five minutes," before handing it over. She popped off the top and blew across her own coffee, carefully sipping, while Wuornos did as instructed and set his aside.

It was very domestic, and Morgan supposed not so unusual for partners who were close - law enforcement partnerships were sometimes closer than marriages. But often those close relationships were borne out of high stress postings. Haven didn't strike him has high stress, their current case notwithstanding.

Their current case was enough to give anyone an ulcer. The reason why Parker and Wuornos were in early was easy to see on the board in the detectives' office. They had organized all the crime scene photos both from the crime scenes in Camden and the new one by the highway, as well as the three postcards blown up large with the grisly bodies of the victims laid out - slashed throats, open eyes, and clothes soaked in blood.

"Are we sure Reid's not here yet?" Prentiss said sotto voice to Morgan as they took in everything.

"They're dedicated," Morgan said, stepping closer to look at the new photos from the highway site, which didn't appear to show anything new.

"We should get the lab work on the blood type by lunchtime," Parker came to stand beside him with her coffee. "And Bob thinks he might be able to get a partial of the boot sole, maybe match it to a manufacturer." She pointed to the photos of the smeared foot print. What was visible looked like a pretty standard hiking tread.

"That's probably not going to help very much," Morgan said.

Parker nodded in agreement. "These will probably help more." She gestured toward the blown up postcards. "Did you get the ME in Camden to look at them?"

Morgan frowned. They must have; Reid had certainly taken a close look. "Hotch?" he asked over his shoulder, but Hotch wasn't there. "JJ, Prentiss, do we have an ME report on the bodies in the postcards?"

"Reid said the resolution wasn't very good and they couldn't see anything beyond the obvious wounds." Prentiss stuck her finger in the missing person file she'd been reading to keep her place and came over. "You'll be able to ask him when he arrives."

"What about the blood on the ground?" Wuornos joined them. "Did you find it at the places in the postcards?"

"No," said Morgan. The lack of evidence was one of the most frustrating and mysterious parts of the case. "No blood, and we dug down into the soil. It didn't even look disturbed. The forensic guys were stumped."

"Like they victims weren't ever there?" asked Parker, and even though the question was directed at him, Morgan didn't miss the glance she sent her partner's way. Wuornos's eyebrows went up, and a whole conversation passed between them. Maybe they were that kind of married to your partner after all.

"Well, they had to be there at some point," Prentiss said. "Or our unsub had to have photoshopped his victims in somehow."

"But the Camden crime techs said the postcards are the real deal," Morgan pointed out the one detail that had stopped their investigation in its tracks. "We tracked down all the printers but they weren't all from the same company."

Beside him, Prentiss was getting annoyed all over again - they'd been having this argument for four days and not even Reid had come up with a theory that didn't have a few holes in it. How the hell was their unsub making the postcards?

"Morgan, Prentiss." Hotch strode into the office with Chief Hendrickson trailing behind him in his bullet proof vest. That was another thing Morgan was finding weird. They were in the police station; what was Hendrickson so afraid of here? "I just got off the phone with the Rosens. They've agreed to speak with us about their daughter. I want you two to take point and also check out Erica's apartment."

"We already went through it," said Wuornos.

"Yes, but we'll be looking for different things to establish if Ms. Rosen fits our victimology," Hotch said, which was both true and a polite deflection of the fact that they would also be double checking to make sure the detectives hadn't missed anything. It wasn't that Morgan doubted their abilities, but they needed to see everything for themselves to do their job.

"JJ, you and I will retrace her steps based on the witness statements. Detectives, if you would show us the locations?"

"All due respect," said Parker. "I think we should follow up on the postcards."

"The postcards?" Morgan wasn't expecting that request after they'd just been discussing the dead end they'd run into so far.

"We haven't even received one in Haven yet," Hotch started.

"I can take you around town," Hendrickson interrupted.

"We'll get Gloria to take a look at these," Wuronos said, nodding at the blown up photo copies of the postcards on the board.

"Our ME," Parker clarified, bustling around her desk to the phone. "She's sharp. We should probably check out possible locations they might use here. See if the tacky tourist traps have noticed any creepers in their shops."

"We don't have any tacky tourist traps," said Wuornos.

"Oh come on. You're telling me the Yacht Club is a classy joint?" Parker wasn't buying it, and this time it was Hotch Morgan locked eyes with as they were neatly shut out of the conversation.

"Come on." Hendrickson jerked his head toward the front, hustling them along. Since there wasn't a reason to object, Hotch followed him out, the rest of them on his heels.

"That was weird, right?" Morgan asked Prentiss when they got into their SUV.

"We know they have issues with the family's church," she said. "But they have a point about trying to get ahead of our unsub in the shops."

"I guess." But Morgan couldn't shake the feeling that they were being managed.

* * *

><p>The Rosen house was white clapboard with a neat garden, trimmed yard, and stone walkway to the front door. Inside, Prentiss's first impression was that they were in the house version of Erica's apartment, elegant and spare with a cross on the wall above the couch where Mr. and Mrs. Rosen sat, wearing their Sunday best and clasping each other's hands. They were in their late-forties, but looked ten years older with exhaustion and fear.<p>

"I'm so sorry about your daughter. We're doing everything we can to get her back safely," Prentiss said after the introductions. "When was the last time you saw Erica?"

"Last Sunday," said Mrs. Rosen. "At church. She said goodbye on the lawn and then went off home. We didn't think anything of it. It was just like any other week." She choked back tears. "Why haven't you found her yet?"

"They weren't here before today," Mr. Rosen broke in before Prentiss could answer. He was gruff and angry where his wife afraid. "About time you people showed up to take charge."

"We're here to help. And to do that we need your help," Morgan said before they could get derailed. "Now can you tell us about Erica the last day you saw her? Did you notice anything unusual?"

"No!" Both Mr. and Mrs. Rosen looked appalled at the suggestion.

"She's a good girl. A _normal_ girl!" said Mr. Rosen, leaning forward to make his point.

"Sir, we understand. We're not saying any of this was Erica's fault," Morgan said soothingly. "All we're trying to do is establish what happened before she disappeared. Small details, even ones you don't think are important, could be a clue to what happened."

"What were her habits?" Prentiss changed tacks. "Do you know where she normally went after church on Sundays? We understand she just moved back to Haven after graduating college? Any friends she visited? Places she hung out? "

"Yes, she only moved back in May. She got a job at the Historical Restoration Society, for the buildings, you know. After that dreadful meteor shower, there's been so much work to do," said Mrs. Rosen.

"And whose fault was that, I tell you!" said Mr. Rosen. He was agitated and still clearly upset, working himself into a temper that they didn't have to wait to see. "The Haven Police Department, that's who! A bunch of cursed busy-bodies who come asking their questions as if we're the criminals!"

Prentiss, not sure she was following, asked carefully, "The Haven PD caused the meteor shower?"

"Frank, would you hush! They're trying to find our Erica! We finally have real help and you're the one being useless!" Mrs. Rosen snapped.

"I'm useless!" Mr. Rosen turned to his wife. "They are the FBI; they should know the truth, and maybe we'd get some results."

"Well, so was _she_ once, and look what happened."

Prentiss shared a look with Morgan. It looked like they had found the enmity between the church and the police department, in spades. She tilted her head in a silent, lets-follow-up gesture that Morgan nodded to in agreement.

"Mr. Rosen," he interrupted the squabbling couple. "Why don't you and I speak in the kitchen. Your wife can answer the questions about Erica and you can tell me about the investigation by the police so far."

"Frank, no!"

But Mr. Rosen was already getting to his feet, with a, "Yes, that sounds like a fine idea."

"Mrs. Rosen, please," Prentiss reached out a hand to stop her from following. "I just have a few more questions about Erica."

Mrs. Rosen stared at the kitchen door for a long moment before finally turning back. Tears freely ran down her cheeks. "You'll do your best to get her back? You promise?" she asked.

"Yes." Prentiss leaned forward. "Yes, we will. Now what can you tell me about Erica's routine?"

Mrs. Rosen wiped her face with a handkerchief and talked through what she knew of her daughter's life. She had a few high school friends she kept in touch with. They played trivia on Wednesdays at the church. She didn't have a boyfriend, and according to her mother, she would never get up to anything before marriage, which, Prentiss had to give her having seen Erica's apartment. Aside from a bookshelf of romance novels, there had been no sign of any men in her life.

"Everything was _normal_ on Sunday," Mrs. Rosen repeated. "It wasn't till Terry, at the Society called Monday at lunch that I knew anything was wrong. Then those _police officers_ demanded to see her apartment," she said, as if the officers were the ones who had taken her daughter.

"You didn't want them going through her things?" asked Prentiss.

"They had no right."

A loud shattering came from the kitchen - the sound of glass splintering on a countertop - making both Prentiss and Mrs. Rosen jump. Then they were both on their feet and rushing to see what was going on. Prentiss's hand automatically went to her gun, even as Mr. Rosen's irate voice rose into a shout. In the kitchen, he was squared off with Morgan, whose hands were open and spread out in a calming gesture. Neither of them were hurt, and Morgan shook his head to warn off Prentiss from interrupting.

"They come here accusing my God-fearing daughter of being cursed, when it's them that have brought wrath and destruction to this town!" Mr. Rosen was yelling. "They put that jack-booted thug in as Chief - he's not even a proper police officer! Never was! Is that right? And that Nathan Wuornos and his whore walk around like they haven't damned us all, each and every one of us. There's two sets of books you know! The Selectmen had proof till their thugs came and stole it back. They cover up the real crimes, they let the real criminals get away and what's left - the cursed come after my daughter, she disappears and they do nothing. She'll just get swept under the rug like all the rest."

"Frank!" Mrs. Rosen found her voice.

"They're the FBI. They can _do something_ about the corruption in this town!"

Mrs. Rosen, to Prentiss's surprise, didn't protest further, instead pressing her lips together.

Prentiss, frankly, didn't know what to say. Those were very serious accusations, and the Rosens' case wasn't helped by, as Chief Hendrickson had said, the fire and brimstone rhetoric. They were both distraught by their daughter's disappearance and sincere in their disapproval of the Haven PD's attempts to find her. As for the rest, sorting truth from fiction was going to be a nightmare during an on-going investigation.

"Sir. We're going to do everything in our power to find your daughter," Morgan said in his calmest voice. As he talked Mr. Rosen down, assuring him that they would take his allegations seriously, but also adding the necessary reality check, Prentiss couldn't help but look at her watch. It was almost noon, and the mail would be delivered to the station not long after that, if Chief Hendrickson hadn't already sent for it. The likelihood that Erica Rosen's body would be on another postcard was high enough to be near certainty.

After they concluded the interview and were safely back in the car, Morgan looked over at Prentiss before turning on the engine. "You think any of that about the Haven police was true?" he asked.

"They're not cursed."

"No, but the underlying truth. That they're covering up crimes?" Morgan's eyes were serious, and Prentiss held them. Honestly, she didn't know. They'd both heard Garcia's assessment of the town, the jokes about the conspiracy theories. They'd had less the twenty-four hours to take in this whole new location.

"So far," Prentiss began slowly, "Chief Hendrickson and the detectives have been professional and they haven't gotten in our way or directly impeded our investigation." All she had was the facts she'd observed. "And my gut feeling says they're good cops. They care about this case - Parker talks a tough game but she lets her guard down when she's focused. She's invested in solving this case."

Morgan finally put the key in the ignition and got them going. "What about Wuornos?"

"Well, he's certainly not hard on the eyes," said Prentiss, this time getting a laugh. "I don't know," she added more seriously. "He's harder to read. One of the quiet types."

"My gut tells me they're hiding something," said Morgan.

"It's still a small town. When are they not hiding something?"

"Even a town this size, cover-ups can do a lot of damage. It'd almost be easier if they are sleeping together."

"You believe that?"

Morgan shrugged. "Did you see them with the coffee this morning?"

"Yes. It was weird," Prentiss admitted. "But they're partners. How much is that them just being partners on the job? Besides I'm more worried about the tension between the Good Shepherd Church and the department. Neither side seems to be rational about the other."

"If Erica turns up dead, I guess we'll find out how deep it goes."

* * *

><p>Hotch didn't need complications right now. He listened to Morgan and Prentiss's update in the back hallway of the station, as far from eavesdroppers as they could get without actually being in a cell.<p>

"So we're sitting on a powder keg as soon as the next postcard shows up," he said when they were done. "The Rosens and their church will blame the police. Hendrickson and his people will probably exacerbate the situation with their obvious contempt. We'll need to keep a lid on this as much as possible."

"Without a body, we can string the Rosens along, but that's cruel," Morgan said, and he wasn't wrong.

"Without a body, we'll need the local cops to help us narrow down the search," Hotch countered. He hated this case. This was the worst kind of killer, the one who came, murdered, and disappeared. Hotch had encountered a good dozen unsolvable cases in his career, and none of them ended well for anyone. "Get Garcia to track down Chief Hendrickson's history and see if there's any misconduct in Haven's records. Something like that doesn't slip through the cracks easily. For now, though, the focus is the case."

Both of them nodded, and Prentiss asked, "And if we do find them covering up crimes?"

"We make sure that doesn't happen this time." Hotch would rain down holy hell if it turned out that Haven PD was corrupt. But after they caught the unsub.

They didn't have time to waste worrying about something that was only an allegation at this stage. Hotch's more pressing concern was finding out how the unsub was making contact with his victims.

"All right, let's get back, and hope this doesn't blow up in our faces," he said.

JJ was waiting for them in the detectives' office, however, and the news - or should Hotch say, the mail - wasn't good. She was wearing gloves and held in her hands the next postcard.

"Victim number 4," she said. "Erica Rosen."

* * *

><p>"Hey, you! Pinstripe!"<p>

Hotch turned at the voice shouting across the station, and as he was the only person in the building wearing a suit, made eye contact with the speaker: a short stout woman in her mid-sixties wearing a visor, bright purple t-shirt, white shorts, and tennis shoes. She was as stereotypical a retiree as one could get.

"Can I help you?" he asked, glancing around for a uniform to pawn her off on. The rest of the team and the Haven detectives were in the office compiling their notes from the morning.

"Yeah, you can tell Nathan that the next time he wants me to look at dead girls he should ask after I've finished the back nine. I was four under par when he called." She brandished a folder that had the Haven PD stamp across it.

"You must be the medical examiner," Hotch guessed.

"Dr. Gloria Verrano. _Retired_. I keep telling them that and it doesn't stick. You've got one fucked up case here."

Hotch couldn't help the reflexive smile at her profanity. "Agent Aaron Hotchner. This way." But she was already striding past him, well familiar with where she was going.

It was just after two p.m. and the detectives' office was crowded. They'd abandoned working in main room. Reid and Rossi had arrived not twenty minutes earlier, and were crowded around the board with JJ discussing Erica Rosen's last known movements. Prentiss sat at Parker's desk going through the new photos of the pristine location of the gazebo she'd just returned from with Morgan and the Haven police. Wuornos and Parker were camped out at his desk going through surveillance video of the eight shops that sold the postcards.

Both of them stood up when Gloria walked in and said, "You folks need a bigger office. It's like a clown car in here. And whose idea was it to let the Feds in?"

Hotch couldn't help the second smile at her gruff and direct manner.

"Not mine," said Parker, but her own smile took the sting out of it. "But you know FBI agents, always sticking their nose in. Did you find anything?"

"You didn't give me much to look at," Dr. Verrano grumped. There wasn't much space to drop the folder, but when she caught sight of the duplicate blown up photos on the board she went there to point. "You have four young women in their early twenties. That much I got from your files. Their throats are cut and from what I could tell is was one straight shot across. There's more tearing on this one," she pointed to the first victim.

"Like the cut was made with less experience?"

"Could be. But it wasn't like your guy had never done this before. All four of them start at about the same place, straight through the carotid. He knew what he was doing with that knife. And he was strong to get through that neck muscle to make this one's," she pointed at victim two, "head hang like that." Patricia Marbly, propped up next to a wooden signpost at the Camden harbor. She had a thin white scarf draped over her head, which canted at a horrible angle.

"If that's right and he's an experienced killer, these aren't his first victims," said Dave.

"He's reached a new level of competency, that might be why he started staging them. His ritual has evolved," said Reid.

"His ritual involve holding them down too?" asked Dr. Verrano. "It could be a smudge, it could be something. I don't know, but these look like bruises here and here around the wrists on these two girls. I couldn't tell on these two because of the contrast with the background. The shadows make it too hard to see. Same here on this one's legs." She pointed to Erica where her calves were exposed below her dress - white with flowers, likely the same thing she wore to church that morning. The three Camden woman wore torn and dirty pants that had been confirmed as the clothes they'd worn to work on the days they had disappeared. The Camden ME hadn't been able to tell from the pictures if they had been removed at any point. If those were bruises on Erica's legs, then the unsub might have raped her and she struggled. Unfortunately, it was inconclusive.

"He'd have to keep control of them somehow, given the timeline," said Hotch. "They're abducted, held against their will for two to three days, then killed in a messy puddle. Law enforcement gets the postcard with the bodies on display a day later."

"But it doesn't make sense," said Prentiss. "The time it takes to pose the body without getting caught, take the photo, remove the body, clean up the evidence - which should be impossible to do so well - and then graft the photo of the body into a postcard to send to us? That should be a multi-day process."

"Maybe he has a way of speeding it up," Wuornos suggested.

"Even if he did, the violence at the crime scenes should preclude such meticulous attention to detail. He's controlled, but not that controlled. His release should come from the murder, not the clean up," said Prentiss.

"But it's not unheard of. He might have a second pathology that drives him to remove all evidence of his presence, more than wanting to evade capture," Reid replied. "In 1977, Morton Jones was a psychopath who cleaned his victims completely and dressed them in a tuxedo before displaying them in the exact same manner. He was diagnosed with OCD when he was caught."

"Did Morton Jones commit these murders?" asked Dr. Verrano skeptically, raising a pointed eyebrow when Reid opened his mouth. "I didn't think so. If he wanted to avoid capture, he shouldn't have sent you a damn postcard at all."

"We never would have known about him otherwise. The women would have remained missing with no explanation," said JJ.

"But all that effort? In 24 hours?" Prentiss persisted.

"The postcards must have significance beyond taunting us," said Hotch. He didn't have a good answer for the timeline. "Something personal about them in particular. This is tourist season. Maybe he's reliving an experience from his past."

"What, a wedding?" said Parker. She said it half sarcastically, but Hotch glanced at her sharply where she sat on the edge of Wuronos's desk, hands braced behind her and staring at the pictures.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, following her gaze to the photocopies on the board, trying to see what she did.

"Flowers, veil, little pillow, white dress at the gazebo." The sarcasm was completely gone, realization taking its place as Parker stood and went to get a closer look. "I've been staring at the original postcards for half the day, and it's not just the bodies that were added. They didn't make sense until I saw them all together."

"Not all of them are wearing white. The first one is not holding the flowers," said Wuronos, coming around his desk, though his voice didn't suggest he doubted his partner's assessment. "And it's a scarf not a veil in the second one."

"Yeah, well, I'm guessing you never played wedding dress up as a kid. It's like he's grabbing whatever he has," Parker said.

Hotch reevaluated the photos. Taking the props into account, the poses were similar to wedding photos. It was obvious now that he knew what to look for.

"They're his brides," said JJ. "His ideal woman." They'd already noted his preferred victim type - each of the women was of similar age and build, though hair and eye color were a mismatch. This would give them more to narrow down the profile.

"Brides usually indicate a recent loss of a spouse or loved one, or a rejection. If it's the second one, he'll keep killing until the object of his rage is dead. We need to figure out who she is," said Hotch. The room was silent until Dr. Verrano let out a snort.

"All that from a series of pictures," she said, shaking her head. "I'm going back to the golf course."

"Thanks, Gloria," Wuornos said. "I'll see you out."

"Thank me by not calling me next time till after I'm done with my game. I'm going to have to go home and get a stiff drink for this one."

After they left, Prentiss shook her head, too. "It's thin," she said, a wince in her voice.

"It's more than we had an hour ago," said Hotch. "Let's run it down. JJ, check to see if any of the victims were taken near any kind of shop that sold wedding items, and get a list of recent customers. Reid, Prentiss, keep working on the timeline. Parker -"

"Surveillance tapes to see who bought the postcards." She did a shooting motion toward the computer screen with her fingers that made her seem ten years younger. "But first coffee."

"Let's go find Morgan," Hotch said to Dave. "He was outside on the phone with Garcia. If these aren't his first kills, let's see if there are any other missing persons that fit our victimology."

They followed Parker into the main station room, splitting off when she went toward the coffee machine in back. Wuornos and Dr. Verrano were talking by the door.

"It's a weird one, and I couldn't say if it was the blood or the picture. That's your department. But my money would be on -" Dr. Verrano cut off abruptly when she noticed Hotch and Rossi coming closer. Following her gaze over his shoulder, Wuornos watched them in the kind of silence that was waiting for them to leave. What they didn't want them to hear had Hotch extremely curious; they had to be talking about the crime scene and the dump site. Exchanging a look with Dave, Hotch stopped them around the corner to eavesdrop.

"You know in your father's day, the FBI wouldn't have gotten within ten miles of Haven," said Dr. Verrano.

"Wait," Wuornos interrupted.

"What?"

"I didn't hear the door."

Hotch had a split second before he knew they were made to decide to stand his ground when Wuornos turned the corner.

"You need something, agents?" he asked, twitchy around the edges, clearly annoyed and trying to hide it. He put his hands on his hips, and his rolled up shirt sleeves rode up, revealing part of a circular tattoo on the inside of his forearm. It was funny; Wuornos didn't strike Hotch as the tattoo type.

"I don't know," he said, taking a step closer to Wuornos who held his ground. "Why don't you tell us. Is your money on the blood or the picture? And what are we betting on?"

Wuornos tilted his head as if considering. "Trouble," he said. "And my money's on the picture."

"Don't look at me," said Dr. Verrano, stepping between them, forcing both Hotch and Wuornos to break eye contact. It was a neat move, and she had to know what she was doing even as she played it innocent. "I just look at the bodies. Nathan," she gave Wuornos a stern look. "Don't punch the FBI agent."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Hmmf. Well come on, Agent Pinstripe. Walk an old woman down the steps."

Hotch let Dr. Verrano manhandle him out the door and down the steps, exchanging another look with Dave over her head while she nattered about golf and didn't let them ask her any questions.

"Well," said Dave when she was off down the street and the two of them stood in the sunshine outside the station. "That was interesting. Wonder what it was about." He raised his eyebrows at Hotch expectantly, but Hotch could only frown.

"Me too. There's something riding under the surface here, Dave."

"I'm surprised you didn't bring it up and get it out in the open."

"Garcia is looking into it." Hotch was more interested than ever about what she might have dug up. Wuornos was shifty, and accusations of cover ups suddenly didn't seem so theoretical.

Morgan was just down the sidewalk; he waved when he saw them. And every other person on the street watched them as they walked over to join him. Hotch was used to a certain amount of scrutiny, but the looks they were getting now, and earlier when he'd been out with JJ, were more than just idle curiosity.

"It hasn't been a problem so far," he said quietly, feeling watched. "But I'm beginning to think it might become one."


	3. Chapter 3

"If we didn't have victims from more than one town, I'd think our unsub was a postal worker." Reid had his arms crossed, one hand at his chin as he regarded the board. He'd added a map underneath the pictures, orange pushpins marking the locations the victims had been murdered and red ones marking the scenic locations on the postcards. The crime scenes in Camden were all farther inland; the one in Haven was the first by the ocean. The supposed dump sites were all on the coast, if he was dumping them there it would be easy enough to push the bodies into the sea.

"That might explain how he could send the postcards so quickly," Prentiss said.

"And the crazy," Parker commented from where she was still going through surveillance footage of the tourist shops at the other desk.

"If he was a postal worker he'd have access to the post mark stamps. He could slip them in himself, or just hand deliver them," Reid went on.

"In two towns, though?" Prentiss still didn't like it.

"Might make him easier to track down." Reid pulled out his phone, but when he tried Garcia the line was busy. "Morgan must still be talking to her," he said which, knowing what he was calling about, had Prentiss glancing at Parker, but she was focused on the computer screen in front of her. She startled when Parker looked up abruptly, her eyes locking with Prentiss's, assessing her right back.

"You could just call the post offices here and in Camden. They're small enough offices."

"Way ahead of you." Reid gave her a tight smile, phone already at his ear with Information. He talked rapidly with whomever he got on the other end at the Camden Post Office, but when he tried Haven's he quickly hit a brick wall halfway through his explanation.

"Yes, the FBI. . . Yes, I'm aware that tampering with the mail is a federal crime, I'm a federal agent… I don't need to look at anyone's mail, I'm interested in your employees - wait, wait." He looked at his phone in disbelief. "She hung up."

"Let me try." Parker reached for the landline on the desk. When the post office picked up, her voice softened, and she said, "Hi!" like she was talking to an old friend. "This is Detective Audrey Parker with the Haven police. Who am I speaking with? … Yes, I know, I'm sorry about that, Lillian. He's a young agent, just out of training."

Prentiss stifled a laugh at the indignant look on Reid's face.

"We're not asking to look at any mail actually. We got an odd postcard in the mail - yes that one. We wanted to see if you had any information about who sent it? … I understand. How about your employees? Has everyone shown up for work today? Anyone miss any time in the last two weeks?. . . Please, Lillian, I don't think any of them has done anything wrong, but you've heard of the - yeah. … Yeah, I do. … Thanks, Lillian. I promise I'm going to do everything I can to help. … Could you email a list of all your employees? Thanks. …. All right. I'll let you know if I find anything."

When she hung up, Prentiss lightly applauded, then turned to Reid. "That's how you sweet talk a local branch manager." Parker took a short bow in her chair. Reid narrowed his eyes at both of them.

"I'm not just out of training," he said, grumpily.

"Of course not. But now Lillian will forgive you for talking to her," said Parker, a teasing grin on her lips. She turned back to the computer and a minute later sent Reid out to pick up the postal employee list from the printer. While he was out of the room, she said to Prentiss, "He does look like a rookie, you know."

Prentiss smiled, but with an edge as her protective instincts came out. "Don't let him fool you. He's being doing this for longer than I have. And he's a genius."

"Yeah, I got that with all … that." Parker waved toward the map. In addition to the thumbtacks, Reid had drawn circles and lines and asked a dozen questions about safe locations for an unsub to hide a person for several days. He'd highlighted the most probable regions, most of them in the woods north and west of town. Unfortunately for them, Parker said there were a lot of hunting cabins out there.

"Do you think our guy is a postal worker?" Parker asked after a minute.

Despite not thinking it fit, it wasn't a bad idea, Prentiss sighed, but she didn't know anymore. "Maybe," she said. "Any way we look at it, this not much is making much sense." She took the chair by Wuornos's desk and looked at Parker who was watching her as if she was waiting for something. She had a listening face that said Prentiss had her full attention, and since Prentiss had to talk this out with someone, she kept going.

"I know you don't get a lot of these kinds of cases, but this one is starting to make me crazy. The timeline is impossible. The lack of forensic evidence at the places in those postcards - the lack of anything that would cover up forensic evidence. No bleach, no acid - that doesn't happen."

"Maybe something else is going on," said Parker.

"Like what?" Short of beaming technology, Prentiss was out of ideas.

"Something not natural," Parker suggested, and Prentiss almost laughed, but stopped because something in the way Parker said it, with an underlying gravitas, made her stop. She sat up. Parker stared back for a second completely serious, but she didn't hold Prentiss's gaze, looking down and away. "Or something really is in the water around here," she added, this time the joke clear in her voice.

But all Prentiss could think of was their morning visit to the Rosens. "Mr. Rosen said you accused their daughter of being cursed. Don't tell me you believe that - or said that." From all that she had seen of Parker so far, she didn't seem the type.

And Parker instantly denied it. "No. Of course not!" Prentiss didn't know what expression was on her own face, but it was enough for Parker to add, "I would _never_ say something like that. And even if Erica Rosen was troubled, I would do everything in my power to help her. But I don't think she was. In fact I'm certain there was nothing different about her. She was just an unlucky girl who got taken by the wrong son of a bitch."

"An unlucky girl who belonged to a church you dislike," Prentiss pointed out. "Unconscious bias -"

"I don't have a problem with the church; they have a problem with me. That's not relevant here anyway. We have a crime scene that's not a crime scene. We have dead women but no bodies, and if they were ultimately dumped into the sea, at least one of them or their clothes should have washed ashore by now."

Prentiss didn't miss the comment about the church, or the change in topic, but Hotch said focus on the case, so she focused on the case. "Not if he weighted them down. Don't you have three other missing persons that are 'lost at sea'?"

Parker blew out a breath, slumping forward onto her elbows. "Yeah. But they started out on a boat past the islands, and the Coast Guard found them already. These women," she stared over Prentiss's head at the pictures, "it's like, they're _in_ the pictures. And I don't know how to get them out."

Her frustration was like a crack in a carefully maintained facade. Parker was more upset than she'd been letting on, and now was grasping at straws.

"They're not in the pictures. And we will find them," Prentiss said firmly.

"Before the next girl goes missing?" Parker demanded, her eyes holding all her bottled up emotion. Prentiss got it; this was her town and her community being threatened here.

"We still have two days." She hoped. Two days had passed between the previous victims. Of course, the fact that the unsub had moved to Haven meant his timeline could have accelerated as well.

"If we're lucky," Parker said, mirroring her thoughts.

"See anything in the surveillance?" Prentiss asked to get them both back to doing something useful.

Parker talked her through what she'd seen so far: nothing, nothing, and nothing for anyone fitting the preliminary profile, but she still had tape for six more stores to go through.

"Here, let's get some help," Prentiss stood and glanced out into the common area. "Who's your least favorite uniform?"

* * *

><p>Reid's post office lead didn't pan out. Neither did JJ's wedding shop one. When the Rosens called Morgan for an update, Morgan and Hotch went to break the news in person.<p>

Rossi ended up updating the rest of them on what Garcia had found with her magic fingers. Two more missing women, ages 21 and 23, single, of different shades of brunette, but of a similar body type to the others, were reported prior to the first report in Camden, one in Bangor and the second in Belfast. If he left kills sites or bodies, they hadn't been found. Their unsub was traveling south and getting bolder.

"If he's traveling, he's mobile. He has a van or a truck with space to transport a person unseen. The victims don't appear to have bruising at their mouths, so he'd want a secluded location where he could hear their screams," said Reid. He and Rossi were working the map. So far, no single men fitting the profile had turned up at any of the B&Bs in town; preliminary interviews with Hotch and Morgan that afternoon had screened out the seven men who were visiting Haven on their own. That left the surrounding forest as the mostly likely location to find their unsub. It was too late in the day to organize search teams, but they'd be moving out first thing in the morning.

"He's not local so we need to look at campsites and rentals first."

"He could have family with property in the area," said Chief Hendrickson, who'd joined them. After the updates, Prentiss and Parker had moved their surveillance watch party to another office to give them space.

"That'll be more difficult to narrow down until we get more information. How accessible is the forest?" Rossi asked Hendrickson, letting his eyes roam over the man who was still wearing a bullet proof vest in the middle of his own police station. Garcia's behind the scenes digging had turned up Hendrickson's sudden appointment as chief a little more than a year ago, replacing Detective Wuornos of all people, who had taken a sudden leave of absence after replacing his father who was lost at sea a few months before that. Parker was absent from the records during that time, off grid entirely, according to Garcia. It was something out of a god damned soap opera, and awfully thin on the ground with why the musical chiefs, even in the local paper who should have been all over it.

Rossi was actually surprised the local press weren't all over their case right now. It was almost five o'clock and Hendrickson had been fielding phone calls from concerned citizens in his office all day. Word got around fast that the police had a manhunt going on, no matter how they tried to keep a lid on things. If the citizens of this nosy little town were knocking down the door, where were the local reporters looking for a scoop?

Of course, it worked to the team's advantage for now. If the calls kept coming, they'd need to issue a statement, which would play right into the unsub's need for attention. They would have to control the timing for when they had a better lock on his location in order to flush him out.

None of this seemed to occur to Hendrickson as a priority, and Rossi wasn't sure if he should read that as genuine not-giving-a-shit to focus on the case, or inexperience. That was the other thing Garcia had dug up. His appointment to Chief of Police hadn't come with any previous police training.

"If you know where you're going, it's not bad. This area has fewer roads, but there's cabins you can hike in to pretty easily." Hendrickson pointed to one of the regions Reid had highlighted.

"We'll have Garcia narrow down likely properties."

"That might not help," Hendrickson said. Rossi paused in pulling out his phone, raising his eyebrows and wondering just what new wrench was being thrown into the mix. Hendrickson's expression was non-comforting. "A lot of people build cabins on land they own but don't report him. There's dozens of hidey-holes out there."

"Great."

"Lucky for you, I know where a lot of them are." Hendrickson made a grabby hand for the pencil, which Reid handed over. They watched Hendrickson work for a minute, but he wasn't kidding about having a lot of spots to check out.

"How did you learn about all these places?" Rossi asked since he had the opportunity to dig a little.

"My family had a place in the north Brambles. Near the National Forest. Spent most of my time growing up in the woods." Hendrickson paused over a spot on the map, then passed it over and followed one of the topographic lines to the next location.

"Must have been nice - lots of space. Any good hunting out there?"

"If you like that sort of thing," Hendrickson said distracted.

"Not you?"

"I'm not a fan of guns."

Odd for a police officer to say, thought Rossi, and his eyes tracked to Hendrickson's waist.

"You don't carry a weapon?" Reid asked, having noticed too that Hendrickson wasn't wearing a service pistol right now. It was probably in his desk, Rossi supposed, which surprised him because he'd think a man paranoid enough to wear a bullet proof vest inside his own station would be paranoid enough to never let a gun leave his side.

"I carry a weapon when I need one," Hendrickson said easily, not looking at either one of them. His body language was at ease and his attention was still focused on the map. Training or not, his calm self-confidence was a good thing in a police chief.

He marked several more spots on the map, then stepped back. The map now looked like it had been hit by a shotgun blast. It was going to be a lot of ground to cover, and Rossi worried that they didn't have the time.

"I think we should start in this area." Hendrickson pointed north of town. It was closer to the ocean and the roads, but still remote enough to serve their unsub's needs. Refocused on the case, they discussed the likely targets and search patterns for the morning.

There wasn't much more they could do, and Rossi was getting distracted by the need for dinner, when Wuornos came in. He stopped short seeing who was in his office, but quickly strode over to his desk and dropped the newspaper he was carrying on its surface. The detective had been out since the ME left, no explanation for where he'd gone, but Hendrickson's first words were, "Anything?"

"Nothing. They hadn't heard of it, and we didn't find anything in the archives," Wuornos let out a breath, slumping a little against the front of his desk. "Where's Audrey?"

"Damn." Hendrickson made a face. "She's in the back with the surveillance tapes. We're going to search the woods tomorrow."

Wuornos nodded, and as he straightened, no doubt to go find his partner, Rossi jumped in, "What were you looking for in the archives?" And why were they were only hearing about a potential lead now?

It was apparently one that the locals wanted to keep quiet, if the look Wuonos and Hendrickson shared was anything to go by. "I'm going to find Audrey," Wuornos announced.

"Nathan."

But Wuornos was already halfway out the door, waving behind him as he said, "You're the chief, Dwight," which had Hendrickson glaring at his back, hands on his hips. He sighed, when he saw both Rossi and Reid's raised eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

"I guess he doesn't miss the job," Rossi said mildly, getting a narrowed-eyed look from Hendrickson that lasted for a long pause before he sighed again.

"No. He doesn't. And he's a jackass." Hendrickson shook his head.

"So what was he looking into?" asked Reid pointedly. "He didn't mention anything before he left."

"He was checking to see if anything like this had happened in Haven before," said Hendrickson, and if Rossi hadn't been watching the man closely for the past hour, he would have missed the subtle tension that creeped into his body. "Just in case."

It sounded reasonable; the Haven cops seemed to think the unsub had family in the area. But - and Rossi glanced at Reid who was frowning at Hendrickson as his eyes took in all the tiny clues - Hendrickson was lying to them.

"Why do you think this has happened in Haven before?"

"I don't," another lie, "but I don't want us to miss anything either."

Hasty footsteps and then a uniform sticking his head in the door stopped any further questioning. "Audrey thinks she's found something," he said, ducking right out again.

The surveillance tape team had set up in a file room, and space was tight by the time Rossi, Reid, and Hendrickson piled in. As soon as Prentiss saw them, she adjusted the monitor a little so they could see. "Take a look at this."

She clicked play, and they watched the footage of a young, dark-haired woman in her 20s browse the postcard rack by the door of the shop. She carefully selected one, then after a few more minutes, picked out another one. She was deciding on number three when she startled, looking at the door which didn't open. She then communicated to someone outside the frame with big gestures that left her body language jerky in anger as she stomped to the register to pay in cash for the cards, refusing a bag. The camera got one clear 3/4 profile shot of her face as she left, and an even better shot of the postcard, which Prentiss switched screens to show blown up, and pixeleted but still distinguishable, of their dump site.

Rossi didn't need to hear it, but Reid said it anyway. "Our unsub has a partner."

* * *

><p>At almost 8 o'clock, after their mysterious woman failed to show up on either Haven's or the FBI's facial recognition database, and the day shift clerk at the Haven Rite Aid remembered the woman vaguely and the person she was with not at all, Hotch called a halt to the day. It had been long frustrating, and the brief boost in energy from the discovery of the female partner had plummeted with the dead ends they were running into this late in the day. His team was tired and hungry, and Parker and Wuornos had been arguing about how much coffee she was drinking for the last thirty minutes. They all needed a break, and they'd be able to start fresh in the morning.<p>

"We have to revise our profile, and I'd rather we did it on a night of sleep. We're not going to get very far tonight."

"They could take another woman tonight," Parker argued. Wuornos had taken away her empty mug, and she'd been glaring at him ever since. Wuornos had rolled his eyes at her and said he'd buy her dinner.

"Unless we get extremely lucky, whether we're here or not won't change that," Hotch replied. "His pattern is two days. Let's hope he sticks to it."

"We'll have an early start tomorrow," said Morgan, hands braced on the desk he was leaning against, resigned and tired. They had interviewed seven single men today. Tomorrow they'd have to go back and look into the couples.

After grabbing files to mull over in their hotel rooms, and taking Parker's suggestion to Dave's demand for a good place for dinner, the six of them found themselves on the deck of The Grey Gull, a local bar and restaurant on the water. This far north in summertime, the sun was just starting to sink toward the horizon, casting purple and orange stripes across the sky, mirrored in the sea.

"Now this is what I'm talking about for a vacation spot," JJ said, taking in the view.

"Too windy." Prentiss took the seat right under the heater. Even in summer, a night on the water was cool.

"Beautiful sunsets by the ocean is listed as one of the top five criteria for ideal vacation spots. It's usually paired with sandy beaches and tropical attractions, but I find that the important element is the quality of the sunset itself for relaxation," Reid said. "I'd give this one three stars."

"I'm going to need more than a sunset to relax," said Morgan as their waitress approached. He ordered a beer from the tap and clam fritters for the table. As the rest of them put their drink orders in, he set his elbows on the table and rubbed his head.

"Everything okay?" Hotch, who was sitting beside him, asked quietly. The others' attention all focused on them too, though Dave at least made a show of looking over the menu.

"It's just, we've been on this case for almost a week. How did we miss the second unsub?" Morgan blew out a breath. "The murders have all the classic signs of a single male in an slowly escalating rage. He stopped hiding where he killed his victims, he sent us the postcards. He thinks he's invincible. If is partner is the type he's attacking why hasn't he gone after her yet?"

"Maybe he has," said Prentiss. "Maybe she was able to fight him off long enough, or he loves her enough that he couldn't go all the way to killing her, so he finds a surrogate."

"Do you think she's been raped?" JJ asked. "She didn't look afraid of him in the surveillance video. She looked like she was in a position of power, too."

"The violence at the crime scenes suggests a lot of rage that I'd be unsurprised if he was raping the victims. Maybe his impotency with her is one of the driving forces for the kidnappings," Morgan said.

"If she has been raped, abusive relationships are often hidden in plain sight," said Reid. "She may have adapted to have a public face for their relationship that gives the appearance of a normal relationship."

"So basically we're saying it could be either way. Does she even know that he's killing people?" JJ asked. "He could be the one performing normalcy, and she doesn't have a clue that he's going out to attack and murder her double."

"Or she knows that as long as he's free to kill other women, he won't kill her. She's helping him to protect herself," said Hotch. "Thank you," he said as their waitress came back with their drinks.

"I really hope that's not the case because that's just depressing," said Prentiss, leaning back in her chair. Hotch followed her gaze toward the sunset, where in his mind at least, the shades of orange had darkened to shades of blood red. "He's killed six people already, and if she's been there to witness all of them . . ."

No one needed to say that these types of cases were depressing almost by definition, or that as these cases went it was one of the milder ones they'd encountered.

"Desperation is a powerful motivator," Dave offered. "We don't know how much she's involved at this point, if she's actively helping him find targets or just sitting by."

"If she is part of the lure, it would explain why we couldn't find any suspicious activity. Women are much less threatening than men, and other women are likely not to be as suspicious of them," said Reid.

"Are you ready to order now?" Their waitress was waiting with her pad, her eyes wide as she glanced around the table.

Feeling caught out, Hotch sat up straighter and said, "Yes, of course." They went around the table, and after she left, just sat quietly for a minute.

"So, Reid, have you had enough time to give Haven a vacation rating?" Dave changed the subject. Arguing about the peaceable matrix of location, beauty, stimulating activities, and quality of food was a good distraction for a few minutes, but at each alternate suggestion proposed by the team - National Parks, museums in big cities, beach towns - Hotch couldn't help but remember the parade of cases they'd encountered at each location. It was hard to reconcile getting away for a break when traveling for him usually meant business and not pleasure.

"How about you, JJ?" asked Derek, when Emily decried fishing. "Would Will and Henry like getting out on the water?"

"Would they like it? Hell yeah," said JJ. "I, on the other hand, would be safely on the beach. Though maybe not this one." She gestured toward the rocky shore.

"Oh, I don't know," said Dave. "There's something to not having the beach covered in bikini-clad babes and surfers."

"I'm sorry, are you arguing against bikinis?" Derek gave Dave a skeptical look over the top of his beer.

"It's a tired cliche. I like to change things up."

"With what? What secret romantic notions do you have?" Emily teased. "What would you do on vacation in Haven?"

"Try out the local cuisine, admire the unblemished view." Dave shrugged with an amused smile and took a sip of his wine.

The conversation lulled, and Hotch couldn't help but wonder what the unsubs were trying to say with the unblemished views they'd marred with dead bodies. And why, if they were desecrating the sites, they only showed them in postcards.

"Do you think she could be the one sending the postcards?" Prentiss asked after a minute. The case was too close to all their minds for them to stay away from it for long. "It could be her way of repenting. She knows what's going on, can't stop it, but she knows where the bodies are buried and wants to tell us."

"That still doesn't explain the completely clean dump sites," said Morgan

"The wedding tokens make more sense in that context," Hotch said. "They were used in a perverted expression of love by the unsub. Maybe his partner trying to make it up to them in the afterlife."

"I wish we could find the bodies," Prentiss said with a sigh. "Bring some closure to the families. How did the Rosens take the news?"

Hotch flicked a look at Morgan. "Badly. Anger quickly overwhelmed their grief and they're convinced there's going to be a cover up and the killer will go free." He and Morgan had done their best to reassure and calm them, but the couple didn't believe them, not really. "They seem to think that the death of Reverend Driscoll was murder and not a justified shooting."

Garcia's digging had turned up the report and investigation of the shooting done by Detective Parker. She shot the reverend during a search for three missing girls, claiming he was attacking one of them, calling her a curse that needed wiping out. The girl's statement corroborated Parker's and that was the end of the matter.

"I don't buy it." Prentiss shook her head. "Parker is the type who will kill in the defense of others, but she's not a killer for no reason."

"Her service record backs that up. She's former FBI, too, which I can't quite wrap my head around. You'd think she'd be more cooperative," said Morgan. "But it does explain the enmity between the church and the police. Doesn't explain all the talk of curses, though."

The arrival of their food interrupted that train of thought. Their waitress arrived with one tray, forcing polite smiles as she passed out their food. Hotch winced internally that they hadn't checked their earlier gruesome conversation. It happened more than it should while they were on a case. The second waiter who was helping her, however, was all easy smiles saying, cheerfully as he passed out the remaining dishes, "Hot food coming through."

"Thank you," Hotch told him as he set the shrimp scampi in front of him. It smelled divine, and after such a long day with a glorified vending machine sandwich for lunch, he was starving.

"Your welcome," said the waiter, who then set his tray on the adjacent empty table and pulled over one of the chairs between Hotch and JJ. The unexpected breach in etiquette had Hotch sitting up straight, his sidearm under his arm pressed against his ribs and shifted under his jacket. In reflex he ran his eyes over the man - standing he was over 6 feet tall, goatee, dark hair pulled into a ponytail with loose strands falling into his face, no weapon hidden under his loose long sleeved shirt that was only partially buttoned. He was still smiling, an everyone-is-friends-here kind of smile that didn't quite reach all the way to his eyes, which were quick and sharp, assessing all of them in turn.

"Can we help you, Mr. …?" JJ, as surprised as the rest of them, asked politely, letting her confusion color her voice.

If this was their unsub, he had awful timing, Hotch had a moment to think before the man introduced himself.

"Duke Crocker, I own the place." He nodded toward the main building of the restaurant, still smiling. "Beth was freaking out, so I figured I'd come see what about, and what do I find?" He opened his hands up wide to encompass all of them. "Six FBI agents talking about murder and mayhem in our little Haven. I'm shocked." His absolute calm only accentuated the sarcasm.

"How did you know we're FBI?" asked Morgan.

"Please, you've been running around town all day. You think there's anyone in Haven who doesn't know you're Feds?" Duke cocked his head in thought. "Okay, actually, I can think of a couple people, but they shouldn't count."

Mr. Crocker had charisma, Hotch would give him that. "We'll try to keep our work out of the conversation, but it's an occupational hazard," he said dryly.

"Hey, I get it. You're cops. You're on the job, all you can think about is the case, so that's all you talk about. All the freaking time. Trust me, I get it." Crocker said emphatically. "But just keep it to a minimum around here, especially if you're going to bring the Rev's people into it. My girlfriend is already having nightmares about people screaming, and I can't take Beth crying on my shoulder too. So we good?"

"The Rev's people?" Hotch's own eyes sharpened at their unexpected guest. Crocker's hands were braced like he was about to get up, but he paused at the question.

"You should eat before your food gets cold," he said, glancing around at the rest of them, wary. "The Rosens. Everyone heard their daughter disappeared. Now word is she's dead. That why you're in town?"

"Yes," said Hotch since it was pointless to deny it. "Why are you worried about talking about the Rev's people? Does this have anything to do with the so-called cursed?"

"Cursed? Someone actually said that to you?" Crocker looked surprised.

"So you've heard the term," said Dave, which made Crocker laugh, but it wasn't for anything funny.

"Yeah, I've heard it used a time or two." Crocker relaxed back into his seat with an air of nonchalance that was carefully calculated. They'd stumbled onto something more than just religious literalism, and suddenly the angry yelling at the Rosens' house seemed like more of a lead than simple grief. Whether it was relevant to the case wouldn't be clear unless another woman disappeared, but the wedding motif suggested they might be targeting victims for their perceived purity. Hotch wasn't sure Crocker was going to answer the question, and he was right. "What did Nathan and Audrey tell you?"

"Audrey told me that the church members had a problem with her," Prentiss offered, which was news to Hotch, but he trusted her to play it out. "We thought that was just because she shot Reverend Driscoll in the line of duty. Is there another reason? Do they think she's cursed?"

"We're all cursed," Crocker said. He was messing with them and his shark's grin meant he knew it. "They hate her for a lot of reasons, and they hate Nathan for a dozen more, and they hate some people for just existing and others for not dancing to their song. They're not a kind bunch, and Audrey killing the Rev was probably one of the best things she ever did for this town."

"Not a fan, huh?"

"No." Crocker fixed Morgan with a serious stare.

"What about the new reverend?"

"Haven't met him. Don't intend to. I doubt he'd like me." Crocker flashed another grin. "I'm Buddhist."

"Audrey doesn't seem to think much of him either," Prentiss said, digging into her pasta, nonchalantly.

"She has good judgement. Why, you think he's who killed Erica Rosen?"

"No. But the members of the church seem to think that the police cover up crimes in this town. The Rosens seem to think that the man who murdered their daughter will walk away free," Hotch said, watching Crocker closely. "Have you heard of anything like that?"

He had. It was obvious from the wide smile as he leaned back, looked away. "Now why would anyone want to cover up crimes in Haven?" he asked, innocently but there seemed to be a private joke in there somewhere. He wilted under Hotch's stare, however. "Look, Audrey and Nathan are good cops."

"They sound like friends of yours," Morgan said.

"They are. And they hold this town together. There's covering up crime, and then there's letting people get away with things, if you catch my drift."

Hotch caught his drift just fine, and he didn't like it.

But Crocker was already standing to go, a serious expression on his face that seemed at odds with his tone from the rest of the conversation. "I recommend you stand back and let them do their thing when they tell you to. Or you might find more trouble than you bargained for. Enjoy the rest of your dinner."

They watched him go, saying hello to customers by name as he passed, clearly an active entrepreneur who kept his hand on the pulse on life in Haven.

"So," said Morgan. "I guess that confirms it."

"Wuornos and the ME had a private chat about the blood and the postcards that he doesn't want to share with us," Hotch said.

"Parker had an off-hand comment about something she thought was supernatural in play," Prentiss said. "I didn't think she was serious, but . . ."

"Hendrickson was lying when he covered for Wuornos's errand today," said Rossi. "They're all in on it."

"Whatever 'it' is," said JJ.

"These alleged cursed seemed to be what they're trying to hide," Reid said.

Hotch looked around at his team, dinner plates forgotten in front of each of them as they tried to wrap their heads around this new angle that had opened up. "The question is why?"


	4. Chapter 4

For six a.m., the station was crowded. Every police officer, men and two woman in fire department shirts and a handful of people in hunting gear were making preparations for the search when the team showed up.

"Profile first, awkward probing questions after?" Rossi said sotto voice to Hotch as they assessed the gathering. They had a lot of ground to cover now that the profile had changed, and for all that there was something the people of Haven didn't want to tell them, they weren't skimping on the effort of finding the suspects.

Hotch nodded, grim with the job. They'd all stayed up late the night before, hashing and rehashing the victimology and the new profiles for their unsubs. Now they took a few minutes to dump their stuff and get organized before having the chief call everyone together.

"You'll be looking for two people, a man and a woman," Hotch started them off. "The man will be in his late 20s or early 30s. He's the one actually doing the killings. All his victims had their throats slit and cut straight through the muscle so he's strong and efficient. He's been out in public so he's able to blend into the crowd."

"His partner is this woman," Morgan raised the photo they'd pulled from surveillance as JJ distributed copies. "She's about five foot six, dark hair. She's not afraid of her partner, which means she is most likely not being coerced. Since they are traveling together and most likely staying together, she is fully aware of what's happening and participating in some way, most likely as his accomplice. It's not usual for this type of couple, but not impossible. She will not think of herself as a victim, and she'll resist attempts to apprehend her."

"They seem to be playing out a courtship ritual," said Reid. "Tokens for a wedding ceremony are displayed with the victims, so locations with romantic connotations may be one of the places they're targeting to find their victims. Also check out bars and places singles frequent, as all the victims were single women who may have been at a place that people meet for dates."

"Since they are holding the victims for one or two days, they need a place to hold them," Prentiss said next. "Look for vans with blacked out windows, covered trucks. We'll also be coordinating a search of rentals and cabins in the woods. They'll need road access to get into town, but otherwise they'll want a quiet place with no neighbors."

"If you encounter either one of them, call for backup. The murder weapon is a knife, but they may have a gun for controlling the victims," Rossi cautioned, since they were in the middle of a second amendment state. "The staging of the bodies is a display of power. It suggests a superiority complex and no remorse. They will resort to violence if threatened."

"That's it. We'll divide into search teams and coordinate from here. Any questions?" Hotch asked.

While several people finished writing notes, a few of the officers in front glanced past the BAU team to Parker and Wuornos who both were leaning back against the dispatcher's desk, arms crossed, wearing light kaki colored jackets and jeans, a matched set.

"Is there anything _else_ we should know?" asked one of the officers, tall with short hair just strting to go grey at the temples. He was one of the ones who had been going through the surveillance footage with them yesterday. He clearly was asking his own detectives, and Rossi was very curious at what they would say, raising his own eyebrows expectantly when Parker and Wuornos both involuntarily glanced their way.

"The victims' bodies have been appearing in postcards. One of them was bought by the female suspect, so if you see her with one . . ." Parker met Rossi's eyes this time, as he was standing closest to them, then shrugged, trying and failing for nonchalant. Rossi would guarantee that she wasn't going to say that was another way to recognize her. "We're still working on her identity."

The officer nodded, and so did a few others, clearly understanding the subtext. A few in the back, including several firefighters didn't look too happy, sending Parker dark looks as they muttered amongst themselves.

Hendrickson stepped in then, dividing up the search teams while another officer handed the extra helpers radios. Rossi joined Wuornos and Parker before they could slip away to their assignments. "We need to talk for a minute before we get started."

"We really should -"

"We really should talk," Rossi interrupted, holding his hand out toward the office. They were going to get to the bottom of this right now. The two detectives went reluctantly, and Rossi closed the door behind them. Hotch and Hendrickson had been caught by other questions so they would be a minute. From the way Parker was standing defiantly in the middle of the office, hands on her hips and ready to pounce, Rossi had a feeling this was going to become difficult fast.

"So what is it?" she demanded.

"You're not telling us everything," he said, just as frank. "It's cards on the table time. What was that out there? What were you really going to say about our unsub and the postcards - and don't try to deny that there's something you're hiding. You were talking with the ME about it yesterday." Rossi pointed out Wuornos's conversation yesterday.

Wuornos exchanged a long look with Parker. "Well? We have to tell them. They should know what they're walking into," she said, and Wuornos flicked his eyes over to Rossi.

"You're not going to believe us." He did a little head tilt. "Unless I stab myself."

"You're not stabbing yourself, Nathan," Parker said firmly. "Look," she said to Rossi, "Haven is a . . .special place."

"Go on," Rossi was listening.

"People in Haven, some of them, can _do_ things or are things. Things that aren't normal."

"Like what?" Rossi was listening, but Wuornos was right, this was sounding like it was edging into crazy town territory.

"Control the weather, animate machines -"

"- taze people with a touch, not feel anything. That's mine by the way," Wuornos said, with a tight unfriendly smile and a wiggle of his fingers.

Rossi looked between the two of them. For a long moment, his brain was just processing the fact that they were actually saying what they were saying out loud. As if he might believe it. Except they'd said, hadn't they, that he wouldn't believe them. But this is what they came up with? Six impossible things before breakfast? They were covering up whatever was really going on with this . . . bullshit. Thinking, what? That the FBI would buy it hook, line, and sinker and let whatever they were really covering up go?

"Do you think this is funny?" he demanded, the bite in his voice not nearly the shouting he wanted to do. Psychics, superstition, and religious fanaticism were just products of the mind trying to explain away what it couldn't rationalize - or predators preying on the gullible. No matter how you dressed it up, another explanation, a real one, existed that actually had basis in reality.

"Do we look like we're joking?" Parker asked, a bite in her voice, and Rossi couldn't believe she was going to get snippy with him over this. Everything else he'd seen of the detectives showed them to be rational officers of the law.

"You look like nut jobs who want to start a witch hunt!"

"You don't know the first thing about this town!" Wuornos took an aggressive step closer, real anger on his face - he really believed it, and that was what grabbed Rossi's attention. He took a step back, glancing between the detectives again. They both believed what they were saying, that their serial killer had magical powers and was -

A tinkering crash of glass sounded from the other room, and suddenly shouting and commotion drowned out all other thoughts. After a startled pause, all three of them went back into the main room where the rest of the assembled search teams were staring at the brick that had just come through a window. Both Parker and Wuornos ran for the main entrance, Rossi and the rest of the team following as they ran out the front door and in front of an angry mob gathered on the steps.

It was a mad feeding frenzy, and Rossi's first thought was where were all the cameras? He stepped back, bumping into Hotch as they let the local officers wrangle the crowd into some semblance of order. The crowd was made up of middle aged men and women who wore button-down shirts and cardigans. They looked like they belonged at a book club, not a riot. Only one or two had visible weapons, and the officers and their search teams went after them first.

Hendrickson plowed right in with them, yelling at his officers and pushing people back. Wuornos and Parker threw themselves into the fray too, and Rossi watched Wuornos get socked in the face without it slowing him down, brain whirring.

"Back! Back! All of you back!" Hendrickson was shouting.

"Those are the Rosens," Prentiss said, pointing to a couple in the center of the knot standing with a white collared reverend. As soon as the police had the crowd physically settled, they were the ones stepping forward, demanding justice for their daughter.

"She was murdered! _Murdered!_" her father yelled, voice breaking. "And you sit here -"

"We're looking for her killer right now!" Hendrickson said over his shouting.

"Or we would be, if you weren't keeping us from it," said Parker from his shoulder, which had the effect of throwing oil onto the fire. A new cry went up as the mass of people seethed, barely held in check by the living chain of policemen blocking their path.

"You're protecting them. Just like you protect every -"

"And you'd murder every one of -" The new speaker was one of the men in hunting gear who had been at the station to help with the search. His words were cut off by another angry outcry from the people from the church, and the angry shouting started again. He shouted back, a few of his pals backing him up, until there was a second seething mass across from the first, battle lines quickly drawn and staked out.

Two blue uniformed officers and Hendrickson dropped from the line holding back the church members to try and calm the searchers, who were armed with hunting rifles and a shotgun. Fortunately none of them had done more than raise their weapons to point and shout, rather than take aim, and that's when Rossi noticed that more than one of them wearing short sleeves in the summer heat had the same tattoo inked onto the inside of their forearms - circular with a finely penned design on the inside.

"This is insane," JJ said. On the street another crowd was gathering to watch the commotion, people going about their business suddenly having it interrupted. Some of them came over and were joining the people from the church, but others were joining in the opposition, until everyone was shouting murder and blame, the cursed and the murdering sons of bitches who called themselves Christian. It took a good minute, but the police forced a space between the two groups, and despite the noise, people were staying on their sides.

Wuronos and Hendrickson were pushing back the searchers - a couple spat in in Wuornos's face, which he just wiped away, the same tattoo flashing on the inside of his arm. Meanwhile Hendrickson actually talked to a couple of the men and shoved them back with both familiarity and authority that they listened to.

On the other side, Parker and the tall officer who had asked questions inside were handling the church crowd, who seemed to want to hold back because they wanted to avoid contact with her, a bubble of space following her around.

The shouting continued - threats, more blame laid on the cursed - but as fast as it had escalated, it was settling down until a few voices cut through the noise.

"You want more blood on the ground? Is that what you want here? You want it to be mine?" Hendrickson was telling his side.

"Every second we waste here, your daughter's murderer is getting away. Do you want him to get away?" Parker was saying to the Rosens.

Some of the people who had joined in late also tried dispersing one side or the other, older men and women who were clearly informal leaders in the community. The whole mess had started and gone on for only a few minutes.

"JJ, can you work up a press announcement?" asked Hotch.

"Sure. Though I don't see a lot of press here."

"Haven has a local newspaper, but every television station that's started has failed within a few months. The towns on either side have local stations, but Haven news is primarily lifted from the paper, and everyone seems fine with that," Reid said.

"Whoever prints it, we need to calm these people down or we're going to have people trying to hunt down the unsubs themselves," Hotch said. "Or each other."

"Did you hear what they were saying? This 'cursed' thing runs through the whole town. Just how deep is it?" Morgan asked.

The police had finally succeeded in dispatching most of the crowd. A ring of older men had congregated around the chief and detectives, leaving the reverend and a few of the civilian searchers still angry and still close.

"This is nothing more than a sham!" A man in a bow tie was saying. "How can our children be safe in this town?"

"Safe? You want safe? You stop traumatizing every young person with your hate!" said a man with long dark, curly hair. "You already have your school and your secret patrols - oh, don't think we don't know about those!"

"Deep." Rossi said, watching Parker and Wuornos at the heart of the conflict with the chief. "I talked to the detectives, and they buy right into it. They do think that something supernatural is going on."

"Really?" It was hard to tell if Hotch was surprised or not. "In a tight-knit environment like this, it's not unheard of for group thinking to dominate, especially where there's a toxic, 'us' versus 'them' divide."

"The Church with its magical thinking has deemed certain persons cursed. Others and the police have chosen to defend them. The vocabulary has become a shorthand for the destructive actions of the persecuted," Morgan offered.

"Usually there will be a more rational group to stand up to the religious terminology," Reid said with a mixture of surprise and skepticism. "The education level in Haven isn't below average for a town this size. A lot of people left and went to college before returning. That should have inoculated them against this type of group hysteria."

"Maybe there is something in the water," said Prentiss, and that was the last word on it that they had time for.

Chief Hendrickson had finally gotten the last of the looky-loos to leave and was herding the leaders of the conflict back up the steps to the station.

"Agent Hotchner, these are Selectmen Tim Rhodell and Jason Steed, and Vince and Dave Teagues."

"Brothers," Dave Teagues said, offering his hand. Vince Teagues harumphed and pushed past them into the station.

"Don't think flashing the FBI is winning you any favors, Dwight," Steed said frostily. "The city council isn't going to sit on its hands over this."

"The mayor's on his way. You can wait for him in my office," Hendrickson used his height and strength to his advantage. Steed wilted first and stomped into the station with bad grace. Rhodell, the reverend, and the Rosens trailed behind.

"You said you'd save her!" Mr. Rosen said to Morgan as he passed, then before Morgan could reply, he spat in Morgan's face.

"Sir -"

"Let it go," Hotch said quietly, but Morgan was already shaking his head, more sad than upset because that's what the job was. They were called into communities to help find the killers disrupting the town, and often that meant seeing innocent people die and watch their grieving families hate them for being too late.

Back in the common room, the police officers and search teams were reorganizing themselves. The men and women who'd joined one half or the other of the conflict outside retreating to their own corners inside. It was easy to see now that most of the firemen were on one side and most of the civilian hunters were on another. The police force itself, actually appeared to be the neutral party in all this, looking to Parker for orders as she moved among them.

Hendrickson shut himself in his office with the selectmen and the Rosens first, leaving Wuornos to deal with the Teagues for the moment, but they seemed to be getting on fine.

The BAU team had a few minutes to get themselves reorganized while watching the small group dynamics play out before Parker came over, body language open and aggressive. She shot Rossi and Hotch a decidedly done-with-this-bullshit glare. "Do you want to waste more time talking about all that or do you want to find these murderers?" she demanded.

It wasn't just the near-riot they should probably sort out. There were all the other mysteries wrapped up in the confrontation: why the citizens of Haven believed in this curse business, what exactly it meant, and what they were really hiding. But Hotch and Rossi only had to share a quick look to know that they were on the same page.

"We'll table it for later," Rossi said. "Let's find these guys."

* * *

><p>"Spontaneous idiopathic neuropathy." Reid knew his face must be as skeptical as his tone by the way Wuornos rolled his eyes at him. It was rather insulting. "You didn't have this condition from birth?"<p>

"Not actively," said Wuornos turning back to the map. They were on first shift coordinating the search for their unsubs. Emily and Morgan were starting with the rental cabins off the highway, and JJ and Parker were taking care of the hotels in town. Hotch and Rossi had gone ahead with one of the teams Hendrickson assured them knew their way around some of the off-the-map cabins.

When Reid tried to bring up the dispute earlier, Wuornos had raised his eyebrows and said, "I thought you didn't believe us about the troubles."

Reid had narrowed his eyes. "I haven't eliminated all other possibilities yet. Possibilities that are 98 percent more likely to be the cause of the 'curse' than the supernatural."

"Only 98 percent?" Wuonos asked.

"Science can explain a lot, but I don't presume to understand everything. And there are some things I can't explain." Reid didn't always like it, but he couldn't deny it either. He'd seen too much, and sometimes 'there but for the grace of God,' felt more true than anything science could explain.

That didn't stop him from trying to figure out why Wuornos thought his inability to feel pain was caused by a curse. "People with congenital insensitivity pain usually develop it in childhood, but there have been adult cases where an excess of endorphins in the brain has triggered it. Also brain damage. Do you sweat?"

"I'm sorry?" Wuornos turned again, and Reid registered and ignored the confusion on his face that pretty much said he thought Reid was obnoxious and asking irrelevant questions.

"Anhidrosis, the inability to sweat. It sometimes accompanies the disorder. Your body can't regulate its temperature which could make you susceptible to heatstroke."

"I sweat. And I don't have brain damage." This time Wuornos didn't turn back around. None of the teams had checked in yet, probably still driving. "What was your degree in again?"

"Doctorates in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering. BAs in Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy."

That got Wuornos's attention. "You're kidding."

"I have an IQ of 187."

Wuornos let out a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. "I thought the tests were unreliable at the high end. At least that's what Duke always used to say."

Reid opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a woman with chin-length dark brown hair and a stack of books. "Duke used to say what about what?"

"That book smarts were overrated," said Wuornos. "Hey Jennifer. Those them?"

"Fifteen years of Haven High memories," she replied cheerfully, setting the bound books on the spot Wuornos made for them on his desk. "When were done with these, we have East Haven High's to go through too."

"Yearbooks?" Reid stood and came over.

"If she's troubled, she's from Haven. If she's from Haven, she's in the yearbook," Wuornos explained.

"You don't know that she's from Haven," Reid pointed out, but off of Wuornos's expression added, "But it can't hurt to look."

Jennifer, it appeared, would be helping them. She made herself at home at Parker's desk. "Now that we have a face, Dave is going to go through the Herald archive again, but it will take a while, and he said not to expect much since you guys didn't find anything yesterday. They still here?"

"In with Dwight," Wuornos said, nodding toward the chief's office where Hendrickson was still closeted with the town elders. Reid put together Dave and the Haven Herald, with Dave Teagues and wondered at the clout the local newspaper men had to get invited to a closed door meeting.

Jennifer didn't seem concerned and passed each of them five yearbooks, opening the top one on her own stack. Wuornos took his to his desk, leaving Reid the couch.

The yearbooks were fairly standard. Haven High School graduated less than three hundred students a year, and the senior class was distinguished by slightly larger photos than the underclassmen. There were top ten lists, and photos of rows of students belonging to various clubs and sports teams. Reid was looking at 1990, so the hairstyles and fashion were dated, but he doubted that would be a problem if the unsub were among the pages since facial features were mostly set by late adolescence.

Reid moved quickly through the pages, getting a couple odd looks from Wuornos, most likely due to his speed. He caught Jennifer glancing up, but she smiled when she noticed him looking back, which a yawn quickly took over.

"Still not sleeping well?" Wuornos asked. He paused in flipping through his own pages, concerned. Jennifer hadn't said anything, though her body language did suggest tiredness.

"Last night actually wasn't bad," Jennifer said. "I think Duke was happier than I was about it. I was still a nervous wreck for half the night."

"Duke Crocker?" That was the second time his name had come up. Jennifer nodded, and Reid filed away that little bit of information. She and Wuornos were friends then, and she was the girlfriend Crocker had mentioned. "What are your nightmares of?" he asked, curious. "We met Mr. Crocker at his restaurant last night and he mentioned them in passing."

The look he got this time was more considering, but she answered. "Nothing concrete. Screaming mostly, but like it's muffled by cloth. Still horrible."

"The subconscious mind often pulls together odd portions of your waking experience into dreams."

"Trust me, I haven't had any traumatic experiences recently," said Jennifer tightly, pointedly looking down at the yearbook in front of her and turning a page. The topic made her uncomfortable, and even though Reid was curious, he recognized when he should leave it alone. What he really wanted to ask is if she attributed her nightmares to a 'curse' or whether she thought they were just nightmares.

"Let me know if you want coffee," Wuornos said after a beat.

The three of them went back to their respective yearbooks. Reid finished going through his in about ten minutes. "I'm a fast reader, and faces are easier than words" he said when he went to grab two of Wuornos's yearbooks and the detective gave him another of his skeptical raised eyebrows. But it was Jennifer who called out a few minutes later.

"I think I found her." She held up the surveillance photo and compared it to the page as the two of them came over. "Jean Kendall, class of 2000."

"That's her," Wuornos murmured.

"We'll cross reference her with any properties in her or a relative's name," Reid said getting out his phone, and it wasn't long before Garcia's magic touch with property records found them a narrower search grid.

* * *

><p>The middle-aged owner of the Sandalwood Bed and Breakfast was unsettled and scared by the time JJ and Parker finished asking her questions. Her eyes hadn't left Parker after they showed her the photo of the female unsub, and by the time they got back in the car, the No Vacancy light was on out front.<p>

Parker hadn't even mentioned the curse, just the postcards, which JJ hadn't called her on since they were conducting an interview. But it was clear from the owner's reaction that she understood Parker's subtext just fine. Most of the people they'd spoken to this morning had, even though very few of them acknowledged it out loud. So far JJ hadn't said much either, letting Parker take the lead since she was disinclined to yield it, but with each hotel crossed off their list, it got harder and harder to keep quiet.

"So these cursed," JJ said carefully, when their next stop started to look like it was across town. "Everyone knows about them."

Parker shrugged, not looking up from the road. "There used to be more denial, and it used to be easier to hide. The meteor storm kind of burned that option, though." She glanced over. "You still don't think it's real."

"I think that you think it's important for this case and I want to understand why," said JJ. This was more than just a psychic connection to the victims. This was magical powers. "It clearly has everyone in town worried."

Parker's jaw clenched and she drove in silence for a minute, shoulders and hands tense. "They're called the troubles. Calling people cursed was the way the Rev demonized people who had nothing more than the bad luck to come from a troubled family. They're as much victims as anyone." She took a breath. "But the troubled can cause a lot of damage, whether they mean to or not."

"Is there anything they all have in common?"

"It's not some cover for something else," Parker didn't roll her eyes, but she might as well have, seeing right through JJ's question. "Trauma or strong emotions will trigger someone's trouble. They run in families, so if a relative has a trouble, then you can have it triggered too. And there is no rational explanation, no science to it." She glanced at JJ and added defensively, "We're not deluded, or crazy, or anything you clearly think we are. Haven is a place that is outside of normal reality."

JJ understood the impulse to justify their attitude even if she still didn't understand what prompted it. "Are you . . . troubled?" she tried out Parker's word for it.

"No." The word held a hesitation. "I'm immune."

"How does that work?"

"Troubled people are like normal people to me. They react like normal people to me." Parker glanced at JJ again, who felt herself frowning. "Nathan can't feel anything, not pain, not hot, not cold. His sense of touch is nonexistent, except he can feel my touch. How do you explain that?"

The obvious answer was JJ couldn't. But she didn't know that what Parker was saying was true either, whether or not she or the whole town of Haven believed it to be true. Behavior analysis was voodoo to a lot of people too, but it was based on physical cues, real psychology, and years of research into patterns of behavior that unsubs found new ways to play out. For all that each case was different from the textbook, they still followed the same mold. That must be what was happening in Haven - the townspeople were seeing the variations but were too caught up in their own mythology to figure out the mold.

They drove in silence for a half mile. As long as the crazy town politics didn't get in the way of the investigation, they didn't have time to argue the non-existence of the supernatural. Still, it was sad, and a little frightening that the whole town believed in it.

Parker's radio broke the silence.

"Audrey, honey," came the voice of the dispatcher. "I just got a call from a woman who said her daughter didn't come home last night. It hasn't been 24 hours yet -"

"Did you get a description?" Parker interrupted, and JJ pulled out her phone to enter in the details. Nineteen years old, five foot five, slender, brown hair, brown eyes.

"It fits with the rest," said JJ. "They've moved up their timetable."

"Her name's Veronica Ellicott," said Laverne. "Family's at 22 Hopper Street."

"We're on our way," said Parker. "Where's Nathan?"

"He and the skinny agent identified the woman with the postcards. They headed out with Dwight to search the family cabin out in the Brambles. The skinny agent left the info on the map."

JJ smiled as she held tight through Parker's illegal U turn then a left back toward the residential neighborhoods. Spence worked magic with a map.

"You take care now, Audrey," Laverne went on. "Everyone's going every which-way on this one."

"We will," Parker said, sharing a look with JJ before signing off.

"I don't like this accelerated timeline," JJ said. "They must know we're getting close. They may try to use Veronica as a hostage."

"Good," said Parker. "Then she might stay alive long enough for us to find her."

JJ hoped that was true.

* * *

><p>"The Kendall farm dates back to the 1840s. A deed of sale from 1942 lists three main structures and a hunting lodge on the back forty. The land was parceled up, and in 1984 the hunting lodge and surroundings were bought back by Patrick Kendall, grandson of the Kendall that sold it, and father to one Jean Kendall of postcard buying fame." Garcia took a breath loud enough to hear through the phone connection, and Morgan shared a look with Prentiss at the mention of the back forty. That was a lot of land to cover.<p>

"Do you have coordinates for the lodge?"

"Not listed, but there are service roads… and I'm sending you directions as we speak. Chief Hendrickson said it's tricky to find and the last time he saw the place, the forest was eating it. Back up's on the way."

"Where are Hotch and Rossi?" Prentiss asked. She had the paper map spread out on the hood of the SUV and her own phone out with the directions on Google maps. Morgan came to look over her shoulder. It was at least ten miles away through windy roads from the Rogers Crick Resort, where they had just checked four couples off their suspects list and probably scared into leaving early. The investigation was doing a number on the late season tourism.

"They were searching west of you. They're on their way, but they're at least an hour and a half out. Reid and the cops will be there in fifty minutes max, they said."

"Okay, thanks, baby girl. We're on our way, and we'll wait for backup before moving in."

"Stay safe out there," Garcia signed off.

For a long moment, Prentiss and Morgan just stared at the map and all the green forest that looked like so much impenetrable wilderness.

"I hate the ones that are out in the middle of nowhere," said Prentiss, trying for levity and missing.

"Come on. We'll make sure we find the place and sit on them till the locals arrive." Morgan clapped her on the shoulder, and the two of them climbed back into the SUV and got on the road.

Garcia had left out just how bad the roads were, but they occasionally saw fresh tire marks in the dips that were still moist from last night's rain so they had to be on the right track. After twenty minutes of twisting through overgrown underbrush, the tracks disappeared and they had to back track to find the turnoff, then backtrack again when that turnoff turned out to lead to a stream with a footbridge that wasn't on the map. After twenty minutes they finally were on the right road, and after another ten, Prentiss pointed to another turnout.

"There." They went slowly down another few hundred feet and rounded a corner.

Eaten by the forest was a good way to describe it. The building foundation was cut stone, but the wooden walls had half collapsed, with a tree growing into the space where the roof was. Moss covered the rest. Despite the dense trees, the cabin wasn't so far away that they wouldn't notice a giant black SUV coming around the corner.

Morgan scrambled to shift the car into reverse and back out of there before they were noticed.

"I didn't see anyone. Did you?" Prentiss asked when Morgan put them into park.

"Didn't have time." Morgan let out a breath; this felt close, too close. Usually they had more back up or less warning before they were on their own with an unsub.

"How should we do this?"

"Let's gear up and sit watch. I'll take the front, you take the back. See if they have Veronica Ellicott here, but avoid engaging," he said.

It didn't take them much time to get their vests and radios on, but getting into a viable surveillance position took a little longer. The front of the cabin had one visible window, and Morgan switched between watching for movement and tracking Prentiss as she passed through the greenery behind the cabin, slow and careful, though she couldn't hide herself completely. When she disappeared from sight around back, Morgan found himself a perch behind a fallen log about fifty feet from the clearing off to the left of the service road.

He clicked his radio once and a few minutes later received an answering click back, then a quiet, "I'm in position," from Prentiss. "They have a vehicle back here, a beat up ford pickup, blue, with a covered bed."

"Copy," Morgan said just as quietly. "I'm not seeing any movement." He checked his watch. Twenty more minutes before backup was supposed to get there.

He'd barely looked up before the loud bang of the door being thrown open, knocking against the side of the house, startled him into drawing his gun. A tall, brawny man clattered out of the house. He had brown hair and a plain face, carrying a bucket to what Morgan had thought was another fallen tree branch but turned out to be an overgrown pump for a well and trough. The man jerked the arm on the pump and after one or two cranks water started flowing.

"Jean, she better be out by the time I get back in there," he called as he went back into the house, the door banging shut.

"Prentiss -"

"I've got movement," Prentiss said through the radio. "Getting closer."

"Emily, be careful!" Morgan said quickly, swearing when he got no answer. He should have taken the back, but with a cabin this size it was hard to judge which was more likely to be the main entrance.

Where the house had been quiet before, it then erupted with noise. The male unsub was shouting at a woman who was screaming back at him, the two voices interfering with each other into an unintelligible mess for about ten seconds before a third voice screamed over top of them. It pierced the woods, high pitched and in pain.

"Fuck!" Morgan heard through the radio and with his own ears, then the clatter of something wooden and loud falling over.

Then everything happened too fast. Gun ready, by the time Morgan was halfway to the front door, the first woman's voice changed pitch. "Someone's here! Someone's here!"

"Get rid of the fucking bitch!" the man yelled, and the second woman's screaming abruptly stopped like a switch being flipped.

"Morgan -" Prentiss's voice came harried over the radio, but shots were fired before she could finish. "Freeze, FBI!"

Morgan was almost at the door - Prentiss was fine, he'd just heard her identify herself, the rational voice in his head reminded him. She was a trained agent, he was coming, they had this. He heard another shot fired as he barreled through the front door.

"FBI, freeze!" he shouted, but before his eyes could adjust to the dim light, blinded from the midday sun outside, someone bowled into him, shrieking - Jean Kendall, he presumed - and his head crashed into the doorframe before he could brace himself.

Blows to the head were nothing new, but this one was hard enough for Morgan to feel his brain bounce off the inside of his own skull. He pushed himself upright on instinct, but got slammed again, this time to his stomach, his gun batted out of his hands with something long and wooden.

Kendall was still yelling, "Another one! He's bleeding! Oh my god, he's bleeding! He's looking at me! Where is it?" And she hit him again with the tree branch she was wielding like a club. This time Morgan went down hard. He blinked at the room to clear the black spots as Kendall ran out the door, he didn't see anyone else - no screaming victim, no male partner, and no Prentiss.


	5. Chapter 5

"Reid!" He answered the phone, one hand gripping the back of the bench seat in front of him as Wuornos's bronco careened down the winding road. His fingers ached from holding on.

"They got away," Morgan skipped right over any kind of greeting. "Blue Ford pickup with a covered bed, and one of them took the SUV, too."

"How long ago?" Reid asked, and he heard Morgan suck in a breath.

"I don't know. Five, ten minutes?" He didn't sound sure, sending a red flag up in Reid's mind.

"Morgan? Are you all right? What happened?"

"I'm fine. Just tell me you're close and catch them." Morgan sucked in another breath that sounded like pain.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'll be fine. They have Emily. The bastards took her, so you go find them before they . . . Before . . ."

Reid felt his blood run cold, a shiver run down his spine, his breath catch in his throat. It took Morgan calling his name a couple times through the haze of Not Again, for Reid to shake it off and answer.

"Morgan, stay where you are. Hotch is on his way to the cabin. We'll take pursuit. We will find her."

"Find her, Reid. Fuck, don't let them get away."

"I won't."

As soon as he ended the call, both Wuornos and Hendrickson turned to look at him over their shoulders from the front seat. "What happened?" they said, nearly in tandem.

"The unsubs escaped. I think Morgan's hurt, and they took Agent Prentiss when they ran about ten minutes ago. A blue Ford pickup with a covered bed and Morgan's black SUV."

"We're about twenty minutes away," said Wuornos, turning his eyes back to the road.

"There's more than one way out of there once they get to Windy Creek Road," said Hendrickson, which Reid did not find at all reassuring. Hendrickson got on the radio then, telling the other search units to either set up a road block or converge on them, depending on their proximity, while Wuornos nearly took them off the side of the ravine by rounding the next curve too fast.

Once they were back on a straightway, Reid forced his hand to unclench from the seat back and take a breath. Emily was going to be fine. The unsubs were on the move and they couldn't do anything to her while they were running. They'd want a safe, quiet space to enact their ritual, and they'd need to be together for it. Reid took another calming breath.

He knew these emotions - the gripping fear of not knowing what was happening to his friend, the terror of possibility that they'd find her too late, and she'd be as still as death. They had lost Emily once, and even though she came back to them, Reid was not certain he could do that again.

Fortunately, he didn't have long to contemplate it. As soon as they rounded the next curve, Wuornos slammed on the brakes. A blue Ford pickup was coming straight for them.

Reid was sure neither of them would stop in time, but they did. The pickup's single driver had the wheel in a death grip, her tense body visible even from here, and the bronco fishtailed but came to a stop, blocking the road with the driver's side facing the truck, which slammed into the road barrier a few scant feet away. The spinning caused whiplash that hurt, and Reid had to take another breath to get his bearings. It didn't stop Wuornos, however, who leapt out of the bronco before they stopped moving, Hendrickson on his heels and slower since he had to scramble through the muddy bank to get around the bronco.

The driver - female, brown hair - grabbed for something on the seat.

"Gun!" Reid shouted, stumbling out the door, body still reeling from the sudden stop. But no shot went off, the female unsub screamed instead, a cat-like piercing screech. Reid took his eyes off of them for a second as he scrambled to the hood and stopped, drawing his own weapon from behind cover in time to see Hendrickson's full body tackle drive the woman to the ground. He was wrestling for the gun in her hand on the far side of their bodies. The unsub didn't offer any resistance after she was down, her scream turning into a pained wail.

Reid came around the bronco, weapon trained on Jean Kendall as Hendrickson set aside the - not gun, Reid saw, but a square of paper. A postcard - on ground out of her reach.

"I got her. You can put that away," said Hendrickson as he pulled out his handcuffs and secured Kendall's hands behind her back. Face down on the asphalt, she was crying now, big heaving sobs, saying brokenly, "You can't take me, you can't you can't."

Reid let his aim drop. "Where did Wuornos go?" He looked around, but there was no sign of the detective. Heart hammering again, he went to the side of the road and looked over the barrier, but he still didn't see him, or any sign that the slope had been disturbed.

The sound of Kendall's cries changed, and he turned back to see her laughing. It was another broken, unhappy sound, and the smile that she pulled was more a baring of teeth. "I have him," she said. "I have him. You have to let me go, or you'll never get him back. I have him, and you'll have to let me go. They're mine, and it's up to_me_ what happens next. Not you. _Me_."

Reid watched her, not comprehending until he followed Hendrickson's gaze to the postcard on the ground. The chief didn't look surprised, just resigned.

"Let's go," he told her, helping her to her feet and then toward the bronco as Reid, horrified, his brain refusing to slot together the implications - the superstitions, the _cursed_ the locals all believed in - for the slim rectangle of card stock. He crouched and picked up the postcard by its edges.

The scene was taken from the top of a picturesque hillside. A petite wooden church was offset to the right, and rolling green hills descended in the mid ground before jumping to the town laid out below and the sea beyond. Blocky letters spelling out "Haven, Maine" were set in the bottom left corner, opposite the church. It was just a postcard. Except, lying prone at different spots in the mid ground hills, this postcard featured three tiny bodies.

* * *

><p>The Ellicott's house was a typical clapboard house. Mrs. Ellicott invited them in to sit in her living room like a hundred others JJ had sat in. She and Parker were on the edge of the couch, while, distraught, Mrs. Ellicott kept sitting and standing. That was the one thing that never changed either. Grief might be the same but it was also the most personal.<p>

"Please, we're doing everything we can to find your daughter," Parker was saying. "We have officers and the FBI chasing down a lead right now."

"What if it's too late?" Mrs. Ellicott said, standing again. She crossed her arms, pulling her cardigan close around herself. "She could be dead already. Why aren't you out there too?"

"Because we need you to help us," JJ spoke up. "Anything you can remember, where Veronica may have been taken, what she was wearing. They can help us narrow down the search."

"Or maybe you're just stalling so my daughter will die faster," Mrs. Ellicott said with such venom that JJ was taken aback. She was afraid, tense. Her eyes kept darting to the windows, where a few neighbor's had been drawn by the police siren on Parker's car.

"The last thing we want is for your daughter to die," Parker said standing.

"Mrs. Ellicott," JJ leaned forward, but kept herself seated, as small and harmless as possible. "Did someone threaten your daughter?"

Mrs. Ellicott froze mid-pace, her expression hunted. "It's all my fault," she said after a long, drawn out minute,her hand coming up to push her hair back from her forehead. "I never told her."

"Veronica?" Parker asked. "Is she troubled?"

JJ glanced sharply at the detective, but kept quiet, because Mrs. Ellicott was nodding, short and sharp.

"We've been hunted before, so we keep it secret. But, if she's trapped or scared -"

"It'll be triggered. What is the trouble?" Parker asked. "Please, Mrs. Ellicott, we need to know so we can help her."

"You can't help her. Once it happens . . .No one's ever come back." She turned away, trembling.

JJ stood then and went to her. Approaching from the side so Mrs. Ellicott could see her, JJ touched her forearm lightly. "We're going to get her back."

"And we won't let her be lost to her trouble," Parker said, standing too. "I promise you. I'm really good at figuring out how to help people control their troubles."

"You'll want to kill her."

"We won't, I promise," Parker said again. "We're after the people who took her, not Veronica. Can you tell us about it?"

Mrs. Ellicott sniffed, holding in tears, but her eyes fixed on Parker's and she must have seen the determination JJ saw there and held on to it. Parker didn't try to sugarcoat anything, and that was a truth that showed through.

Mrs. Ellicott wiped her eyes and headed for the bookshelf, pulling down an old leather-bound tome that looked a hundred years old. "It'll be easier if I show you."

* * *

><p>The sun was too bright outside, and Morgan didn't know where his sunglasses were, but he missed them. He ducked into the shade by the steps and waved at the patrolwaman who was his ride. "I'll be right there," he said, waving his phone a little bit.<p>

Garcia picked up before the end of the first ring and immediately started talking. "Derek! Oh my God, are you all right? Please tell me you're not hurt. What did the doctors say?"

Derek appreciated the worry in her voice, smiling a little bit even as he switched to speaker so she wouldn't be talking straight into his ear. "I'm fine, Penelope," he told her and added before she dug into his medical file, "I have a minor concussion. The docs checked me out and cleared me."

"A concussion is never minor!" Garcia said, which funnily enough was exactly what the young doctor inside had said when Derek asked if he could go.

"I don't have time to be benched," Morgan said, glancing back at the old medical center building behind him. He didn't have much time for this phone call really, but better he call Garcia now than later. "The unsub is in the wind, and . . ." This was the part that Morgan had been dreading, but she needed to know, needed to know how urgent it was to get an ID on this guy. He took a steadying breath. "And he has Emily."

"I know. God, it's really true then," she said, her voice squeaking up. "Reid told me. He said the Haven PD think she's not with him, and he was saying some weird things about being in a postcard? Are they crazy? They're going to get her killed thinking like that."

"I know, I know. We're going to get her back," Morgan said. Damn crazy local cops. They were so stuck on their supernatural explanations they were going to get more than just Prentiss killed. He took in a deep breath. His head was throbbing.

"Derek?" Garcia said. "Derek? Are you still with me?"

"I'm here," he said, taking another breath that was suddenly harder than the last one. He had to pull it together.

"Are you okay?"

Her concerned question nearly did him in. "Yeah." He blinked hard. "Yeah, I'm fine." He rubbed his nose. Got himself together. "We're going to find this son of a bitch and we're going to find Prentiss."

"Yes. Yes we are," Garcia said, her tone turning to the super mama hacker tone he knew and loved. "I've already started a back trace of everyone in Jean Kendall's life, but I need details. Reid said you could give me a description of the unsub."

"Brown hair, cut short, in his late 20s or early 30s. About five foot ten or eleven, a hundred and eighty pounds. Fit but he has a beer belly. He was wearing jeans and a dark blue button down shirt. Nothing too remarkable about him. He'd be able to blend in pretty easily in this area."

"We've got an APB out on the SUV he stole," Garcia said.

"Checkpoints?"

"Check on the checkpoints, but no sightings yet. Hotch and Rossi were on their way back to the station when I talked to them not long ago. They're probably there by now."

"That's where I'm headed next." Morgan's patrol officer was still waiting patiently by the cruiser for him.

"I'll let you know as soon as I have something. Bring her home."

"Count on it, girlfriend."

* * *

><p>Hotch didn't know what he was more surprised by: the explanation or the fact that it was Reid giving it.<p>

"I know it sounds crazy -"

"It is crazy!" Dave cut in. "Reid, we're talking about believing that those three little marks are full grown adults who have been shunted into a postcard!"

"Where's Chief Hendrickson?" Hotch asked. He was calm, but it was the hard won calm from years of fieldwork. Emily was in the hands of the unsub and the only way they were going to get her back was if he remained calm.

Reid pointed toward the closed office door, and Hotch didn't need further prompting. He was going to get to the bottom of this. He didn't bother knocking on the door when he barged in. Hendrickson was on the phone but he didn't seem surprised to see Hotch.

"Update me as soon as you clear the area," Hendrickson was saying. "And Kyle, be careful out there." He hung up, and Hotch didn't give him time to regroup.

"Was that one of the search teams?"

"Yes. Nothing yet, but they're still looking."

"Are they?"

"Yes," Hendrickson bristled. "You think we don't want this guy caught? He's murdering women out there."

"I think you have a funny way of going about an investigation," said Hotch. "Where's Wuornos?"

Hendrickson abruptly came around the desk, annoyance in every line of his body. He was of a height with Hotch, but had probably fifty pounds on him, which was evident when Hendrickson stopped right in his face. "You don't want to believe in the troubles. Fine," he said quietly. Like Hotch, he was to all appearances calm. "But you don't get in my way while I investigate the postcard either."

"I need all of your resources out looking for the unsub. He has one of my agents. I would think you'd be taking your missing detective a little more seriously."

"Don't lecture me about taking this seriously. You have no idea. And I'm not abandoning the search. Stan and I will still help you coordinate with my men out there. Detective Parker will work our angle, and you leave her the hell alone. Deal?"

"You're playing a dangerous game, Chief," Hotch said. He was surprised he wasn't getting more resistance, and his mind immediately leapt to wondering what other angles Hendrickson could be playing.

"Yeah, well. That's what happens around here," Hendrickson said, finally taking a step back. Hotch eyed him warily, but accepted the truce for now.

"We need to speak with the female unsub in custody," he said.

"That'll have to wait till Audrey gets here."

"We do not have time to wait!" Hotch snapped. "We have to know what she knows _now_. Every second we spend talking now is another second Prentiss and Veronica Ellicott do not have." On the tip of his tongue was charging Hendrickson with obstruction of justice, but that would only destroy what goodwill he had left, so he swallowed it down. The priority was finding the male unsub as quickly as possible.

"She's on her way," Hendrickson said. "She'll be here in ten minutes."

"Ten minutes. And she watches from the the observation room," said Hotch.

"I'll let you try and kick her out," Hendrickson said, heading for the door.

With something rational to finally focus on, Hotch nodded. He could handle Detective Parker when she arrived.

"Any luck?" asked Dave when Hotch rejoined him and Reid in the detectives' office. The postcard was tacked to the center of the board, the three black marks - he refused to acknowledge that they might resemble bodies - where they were ten minutes ago.

"Hendrickson is pursuing the postcard lead and wants us to wait for Parker to get back before talking to Jean Kendall." Hotch took out his phone. "I don't think he's interested in getting in our way, but he's not going to be giving us his full help either. He didn't comment on where Wuornos went off to."

"That's something," said Dave, "Let's hope this hocus pocus doesn't get anyone killed before any of our other 'help' disappears."

"But that's just it. Wuornos did disappear," said Reid, shaking his head. "You weren't there!" he added, defensively. "But I don't have another way to explain it. One second he and Hendrickson were confronting Kendall and the next he was gone."

"Reid -"

"What if we're the ones missing something?"

Hotch shared an uneasy glance with Dave. It was too much to buy into, but Reid was usually the voice of science and reason. When he started drinking the kool-aid, it usually meant personal issues were getting in the way.

"It doesn't change the fact that we need to speak with Jean Kendall to locate her partner," said Hotch. He hit the speed dial for Garcia.

"Speak and be spoken to," Garcia answered moments later.

"What have you got on Kendall?"

"A gold mine of information. Jean Kendall is a Haven native. Graduated Haven High in 2000. Dropped out of Eastern Maine Community College a year later. No record, but terrible credit. She went through a string of eight waitressing jobs over the course of five years. She finally landed a steady gig at the Cracker Barrel in Portland in 2006, and three years later her name shows up on a lease with a Jeremy Rand."

"Boyfriend?"

"And not a very nice one," said Garcia. "He does have a record, for bar fighting, and their living together corresponds with one hospital visit for our Jean Kendall. Police report was filed by the doctor for a broken arm and severe bruising about her torso."

"Sounds like a piece of work," Dave said.

"As you no doubt have already guessed," Garcia continues, "no charges were pressed and future hospital visits were avoided."

"He covers it up, promises he'll never do it again, and whether he keeps that promise or not, she stays with him." Hotch sighed. It was an all too common story.

"She fits the victimology," said Reid. "Somehow she convinced him to stop abusing her and he started killing look-a-likes."

"And in the process she became his partner in crime," said Rossi.

"I've been looking for any connections Rand might have to Haven but nada," said Garcia on the phone. "His only connection is Kendall."

"So he doesn't know the area. He's driving blind," Hotch said. "He's going to be desperate."

"We've got to find him fast," Dave said. "Before he slips through Hendrickson's leaky net."

"Dwight!"

Parker's voice cut through the station, the sound of a door slamming echoed behind her. Hotch, Dave and Reid weren't the only ones rushing out to see what was going on. Parker was frantic.

"Where's the postcard?" she said as soon as she saw Hendrickson, already pushing past to the office. Hotch stepped out of her way before he was run over. Parker went straight for the board, her fingers brushing the edges of the postcard where it was tacked up.

"Nathan," Parker said, her whole face worried. "God damn it. Three of them."

JJ ran in after her, Hendrickson following.

"What's going on?" asked Hotch, but JJ, eyes wide just shook her head. She looked shaken.

"We went to interview Mrs. Ellicott, mother of the last victim, and she told us about her family. She had drawings, photos . . ." JJ trailed off, like she couldn't find the words.

"JJ?" Hotch put a hand on her shoulder, offering comfort. He hadn't seen JJ lost like this in a long time.

"There's no rational explanation," she said. "But I saw them, Hotch. And I don't think they were faked."

"She's troubled," said Parker over her shoulder, her voice sharp and agitated as she spun around to face the rest of them. "We have to get them out of there. Now."

"Bad?" asked Hendrickson from the door.

"Very," said Parker.

And just when Hotch was getting fed up with everyone talking around whatever it was that had shaken up JJ, movement caught his attention. Movement in the postcard.

"Oh my God," Reid said, taking a step away from the board even as Hotch took a step closer. One of the tiny smudges turned into a tiny person pushing herself to her feet.

"Agent Prentiss!" Parker shouted. "Can you hear me?" But the tiny figure, an inch tall, continued brushing off her knees and looking around. The perfect tiny replica of Emily Prentiss.

Hotch stared, seeing it but not believing it. It was impossible.

"I'm starting to see what you mean by troubles," Dave said, a stunned tone in his voice. In the far background, another figure was stirring. Hotch waited for the lanky form of Detective Wuornos to resolve, but it wasn't him.

It wasn't human.

"That's her, isn't it?" said JJ. "That's what was in the family photo album."

"Who?" Reid asked.

JJ didn't look away from the postcard. "Veronica Ellicott."

* * *

><p>Prentiss had no idea where she was but it wasn't the cabin in the woods. She pushed herself up from green grass carefully, but she didn't seem to be injured at all. She was still in her bullet-proof vest and her gun was in her hand. She put the safety on and holstered it, glad it hadn't gone off in her face while she was out. The last thing she remembered was knocking into a rain barrel trying to get a better look through an open window. Something had fallen, Kendall had been yelling, and then - she woke up here. Wherever here was.<p>

She took stock as she dusted blades of grass from her pants. They were oddly brittle, like someone had hair sprayed it and it didn't want to move. An outline of where she had lain on the ground was clearly visible, but there were no other tracks, not a car's, not a person's. Prentiss toed the ground and the grass crackled. This was definitely weird.

"Morgan?" she called, pulling out her phone, but it had no signal. About two hundred yards away at the top of the next hill was a small white church. Lacking any other direction to go in, Prentiss started walking. It didn't take long to reach.

The whole structure wasn't much bigger than her apartment, and given the lack of a modern parking lot, or a road for that matter, it looked more like a historical landmark than an active church. It had flaking paint, especially around the two small windows on the left side, which she passed as she made her way to the front door. Nearby was the edge of the woods, tall thick trees with rich golden and red leaves curved around the far side. Behind the church, where she'd just come from, the rolling hills were a mix of more woods and pasture. Beautiful yes, but equally bereft of roads or other signs of people except for the town visible miles in the distance. In the opposite direction - Prentiss squinted, wondering if she'd hit her head.

About three hundred feet in front of the church, the grassy slope descended into a thick fog, broken only by the occasional branch of what must be more woods. But that was a guess, because it looked more like trying to see the light on the tip of an airplane wing while flying through a cloud: smudged and barely there.

"What the hell . . ." Prentiss said, staring at the cloud that wasn't a cloud. No breeze, no air currents, just sunny skies on a beautiful autumn day nowhere near civilization.

"It's not fall." Prentiss snapped her head back to stare at the trees. It was late summer. Time to start seeing a hint of yellow, a chill in the evenings, but not for this deep color change.

Prentiss's heart started to pound, because this? This was beyond weird and well into freaky.

"Morgan!" She called out again, but got nothing. She was to all appearances alone.

Prentiss tried the church next, but the door was stuck solid. She tried the woods, but a hundred yards in she encountered the cloud again. She wasn't quite brave enough to venture in there just yet, so she retraced her steps, branches and leaves crackling under her feet the way the grass had - brittle and not quite right. The only possible explanation for all this was the one her mind was shying away from.

"I'm going to go back, find a road, and get back into town," she told herself, as much to hear a human voice as anything. "It'll be fine."

The ear-splitting roar that suddenly echoed through the woods made her stop in her tracks, her blood running cold at the noise. That didn't sound fine. Part scream, part howl, it didn't sound like any animal Prentiss had ever heard of either.

"That didn't sound promising," she murmured, her hand going to her weapon. Prentiss took a breath and pushed her uneasiness down. She'd been in worse situations, after all, and the last thing she needed to do right now was panic.

It didn't take long to return to the church, and Prentiss scanned the area to make sure it was clear before stepping out of the trees. Her ears pricked at the sound of grass crunching from the far side of the building. Hugging the wall of the church, she carefully approached the far corner as the crunching drew closer. She spun around the corner, weapon aimed at center mass - "Freeze!"

"Whoa!" Wuornos had a fast draw that he immediately pulled when he recognized her. Prentiss let her own arms fall, the tension leeching out of her shoulders.

"Jesus, am I glad it's you," she said, letting her relief run its course. He wasn't who she was hoping to find but he was certainly better than whatever had made that howl.

Wuornos holstered his gun. "Is it just you?"

"Yeah, I haven't seen anyone else. Do you know where we are? Or how we got here? I've never seen cloud banks like that before. It's starting to freak me out." Prentiss tried smiling, make the freaky clouds something she could laugh at.

Wuornos was glancing around and he had a cautious expression on his face when he turned back to her. "You remember how we were talking about Haven being a special place?"

"Uh huh." Prentiss was afraid it would come back to that. She didn't like where this was going.

"I'm pretty sure we're in the postcard Jean Kendall was holding," Wuornos said with a straight face.

"Right. The postcard," Prentiss repeated, her gaze sliding off of him toward the cloud bank that blocked what should have been a beautiful view of the ocean. She wanted to say, no, it was impossible. But that wall of fog wasn't moving. It hadn't moved since she woke up, and maybe she had seen too many Star Trek episodes, but her mind couldn't help but feel like she was staring in one.

"Whether you believe it or not, doesn't change the fact," said Wuornos.

"Does it count if I really don't want to believe you?" she asked. "I mean, there's a church and trees and sunshine." She gestured all around them because it was all _real_, and the rational part of her brain pointed out that being inside a postcard was ludicrous.

"And the clouds?" Wuornos pointed toward the cloud bank, and all Prentiss could do was shake her head.

"Yeah, I got nothing." She turned back to him and was rewarded with a half of a smile from Wuornos.

"Look, I know it's not easy," he said tucking his hands under his armpits. "I was in denial about the troubles being back for two years before I accepted it. But this is real, and if you can work with me in this framework, we'll get out of here. Somehow." He tilted his head a little bit, that part of the plan clearly not figured out yet. "We can take a minute to run through all the rational explanations, if you need to. Audrey and I used to do that when the troubles first started heating up."

"I - no." Prentiss took a deep breath to shake off the uncomfortable realization that she didn't need to rationalize being trapped in a postcard. She believed it already. She was already more freaked out than she liked, and the clouds, the grass, the lack of any other sign that someone had been here - it was all too uncanny. "Postcard, huh? I guess it would be too much to hope we just click our heels three times to get home?"

"It's never that easy," said Wuornos with a half smile that wasn't anything amused. "The effects of a trouble comes from the person who controls it. Jean Kendall will have to release us."

"And how likely is that?"

"I was with Dwight and your Dr. Reid when she got me, so let's hope they took her in and can convince her."

"She wasn't in a very good mental state when I saw her," said Prentiss. "She might not be easy to convince. Was her partner with her?"

"They split up after they left the cabin. After that I'm in the dark as much as you are."

Prentiss nodded, wrapping her head around it. "So what's next?"

As if it heard her question, the screeching howl from before sounded again, startling both her and Wuornos, who let his arms drop, hands coming up to grip his gun, though he kept it pointed at the ground.

"We try not to get eaten," he said, unhelpfully.

"What is it?"

"Don't know. Did you see anyone else when you woke up?"

"No," said Prentiss. "And I didn't see any bears when I was at the cabin either."

"Didn't sound like a bear," Wuornos said, his attention on the hills behind the church.

"Well, I don't know what else it could have been - and don't say dragons. I really can't handle that right now."

Wuornos shot her a look that all but said he thought she was crazy, but it only lasted a second before the howl came again - closer. And this time, Prentiss could hear the rustle of something moving fast through the trees that blanketed the left side of the hill.

"That sounds big," Prentiss said, starting to get worried now.

Wuornos checked his gun, put the safety on and holstered it. "Too big for our guns. Let's get to cover." He turned toward the church, and Prentiss followed.

The church door was no more cooperative than it had been when Prentiss and tried it earlier, even with two of them pushing on it.

"The wood's swollen," Wuornos said, his whole body weight leaning into the door. It barely rattled when he shook the handle. Prentiss, braced with her back to the door, kept an eye on the woods.

Whatever was out there screeched again; it would be there any second. She could hear it crashing through the underbrush, and they still didn't have the door open. The the black blur was on top of them - a giant black cat, and holy shit those were wings.

"Wuornos!" Prentiss had a half second to shove Wuornos out of the way when it pounced. They landed on the ground hard, and Prentiss was going to feel the bruises on her hip in the morning. The black beast landed right where they had been on the door, its weight finally enough to knock it open.

"Sreeeeeeeee!" It spun quickly, however, looking for prey - which was them.

"Go right! Get inside!" Wuornos was already scrambling to his feet and shoving Prentiss away from him. "Hey!" he shouted at the beast, grabbing its attention. It was a stupid macho move, but Prentiss took the distraction, darting around to the right. The beast crouched, ready to pounce and crush Wuornos beneath its massive paws.

Without overthinking it, Prentiss drew her weapon, but by the time she fired, the beast had pounced - Wuornos dodged, falling when his foot got caught, but he scrambled to his feet anyway. The beast, upset by the gunfire, screeched again, spinning around looking for the source of the loud noises, but Prentiss was already running again. She and Wuornos stumbled to the door of the church and slammed it closed behind them.

Out of breath, Prentiss slumped against the door, bracing when a concussive thump landed heavily on the other side the door. Shoulder to shoulder with Wuornos, they dug in their feet and pushed against the beast's weight. Another howl came, high pitched enough to make Prentiss's ears hurt, but the door stayed solidly closed.

They felt the beast give a last half-hearted thump, then another, then it gave up and started to pace outside, howling intermittently for the next twenty minutes before the noise slowly tapered off.

"Do you think it's gone?" Prentiss asked.

A loud humph outside shook the door one last time. The pawing stopped, and Prentiss exchanged a glance with Wuornos because it sounded like -

They both turned, but Wuornos got to the crack between the door and the frame first. "It's camped out in front of the door."

"Asleep?" Prentiss asked hopefully.

"No such luck," said Wuornos. "Looks like we're staying in here for a while."

Prentiss glanced around the bare interior of the church - no altar, no pews, no nothing except for a bare floorboards. She barely cared why as sweat cooled on her skin and the adrenaline crash made her legs turn to jelly. She slid to the floor, back still against the door. She was going to hurt tomorrow. Wuornos collapsed beside her, breathing just as hard.

"You're bleeding." Prentiss nodded to his right ankle, where his jeans had been ripped by claw.

"Where?" Wuornos asked, looking first to his chest and arms, and finally his leg. "Oh." He tugged at the tear, ripping it wider to get a better look. It was a wide scratch from a massive claw, but it didn't look very deep, and as Prentiss watched Wuornos poke at it without flinching, without _feeling pain_, the awkward dream-like feeling she'd had since she woke up settled into actual reality around her.

A man who couldn't feel the gash in his leg sat beside her, and a mythical beast was waiting outside the door of the empty church there were in. All inside of a postcard. Prentiss let her head thump back against the door, and shoved down the panic that was tickling the edges of her self-control. How the hell they were going to get out of this one?


	6. Chapter 6

Hotch followed Parker into the interrogation room where Jean Kendall was handcuffed to the table. She sat hunched over, and her hair fell into her eyes when she looked up.

Hotch set the case file on the table and sat down across from Kendall, while Parker took the second chair to the side.

"I'm Agent Hotchner with the FBI. This is Detective Parker. As I'm sure you're aware, Ms. Kendall, you are being charged with five counts of kidnapping and four counts of murder."

"I didn't kill anyone," Kendall said, sitting up straight.

"But you helped your partner kill four women," Hotch said calmly. "Just because you didn't wield the knife doesn't let you off the hook. Your partner's name is Jeremy Rand, is that correct?"

They had distributed his name and photo to all the road blocks and officers searching through town. Morgan and JJ were out there with Hendrickson and his men now. Rand had a head start and so far he hadn't popped up, but it was only a matter of time.

Kendall was tense, but she stayed quiet, clearly thinking through her options. "There's no proof," she said finally.

"Please, just answer the question," said Hotch, staying calm.

"Did he force you to help?" Parker asked, leaning forward.

"I love him!" Kendall snapped, her earlier hesitation evaporating with the declaration. "He loves me."

"Jeremy beat you and landed you in the hospital," Hotch said, getting a defiant glare from Kendall.

"That wasn't his fault," Kendall said. "And he never touched me again."

"Because you didn't let him," said Parker, getting a sharp look from Kendall. "The first time he beat you, it activated your trouble. The second time he tried, you put him in a picture."

Kendall remained silent, but her eyes didn't stray from Parker's face.

"Why did you let him out?" Parker asked. "You could have been rid of him forever."

"I love him. He loves me." Kendall's glare was in full force. "Why would I want to get rid of the man who loves me?"

"How does he show that love, Jean?" asked Hotch. Her attitude suggested that Rand was verbally abusive when physical abuse failed him. "Did he tell you to trap them in a postcard?"

"They were just practice. I took care of them so they would be good practice," she said, jerking on her handcuffs, which clattered against the metal loop on the table.

"Practice for what?" Hotch asked.

"He's going to marry me. He wasn't ready though, so he needed to practice."

"He killed those women." Parker leaned forward abruptly. "He murdered them, and you helped him."

"I took care of them!" Kendall shouted. "They got their day!"

"You dressed up their corpses and put them in a pretty picture, but they're still dead," Parker said, trying to explain, but Kendall was too far in denial and was already shaking her head. They needed to try another tack.

"You trapped another woman in the postcard. Her name is Veronica. She's nineteen years old, working at her first job, and her mother is worried sick about her." Hotch would have shown her Veronica's picture to remind her that the person she'd kidnapped was living breathing person, but Parker had insisted that bringing any image near Kendall was a bad idea.

"She was talking with Jeremy," Kendall said. "He needed to practice with the rings."

"She's trapped in a postcard. We'd like you to bring her home."

Kendall looked straight at Hotch, her face unreadable for a long moment before she nodded. "Only if you let me go."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," said Hotch.

"I want to see Jeremy."

"When we apprehend him -"

"No! No!" Kendall shouted, her voice cracking as she went from calm to hysterical. "You leave him alone! You let us go! You let us go, and I'll let the girl go!" She yanked on her handcuffs, but she was well-secured and it didn't take long before she wore herself out. Kendall slumped back in her chair, glaring at both of them. "She'll die in there," she said. "They all will, the girl and the cops, unless you let us go."

She wasn't going to budge. That much was easy to see, and Hotch exchanged a look with Parker who could see it, too. Without speaking, they stood and left the interrogation room.

Dave was waiting in the observation room outside.

"That went well," said Parker dryly, crossing her arms and glaring through the one-way window at Kendall.

"She's got a hell of a bargaining chip for a man who's abused her," Hotch said. "Any word from the searchers?"

"Not yet," said Dave. "And I'm not sure finding Rand will give us anything else on her. She's insecure, convinced he's the only one who loves her, and after this murder spree, she probably thinks he's the only one who ever will. Deep down she knows what she's doing is wrong, but she's gone too far down this path. She's committed now."

"We _have_ to get through to her," said Parker.

"That's just it," Dave said. "I don't think we will."

"Agent Prentiss can handle herself, and she and Detective Wuornos are safe in the church for now," Hotch said. It was all he could hope that they would stay safe. Watching them struggle against the transformed Veronica had been terrifying. The worst part was that they couldn't even talk to them.

"I'm more worried about the lack of water and food in postcard-land and the poor girl who's been trapped in there for days already, freaking out as a beast thinking they might make a nice snack," Parker said.

"She wouldn't -" Dave started, but Parker just raised her eyebrows.

"You really want to wait and find out?"

"No, of course not."

"Then we'd better think of a way to convince Little Miss Wedding Bells that she needs to let them go."

"She let the victims out for Rand before. Maybe we use him to get her to do it again," Hotch suggested. It was their best bet at this point.

"Let's hope they find him soon then," said Parker. She turned and hurried through the door.

"Where are you going?" Hotch called after her.

"To call plan B."

* * *

><p>"So. Does this happen often?" Prentiss asked. They'd been sitting braced against the door for an hour or so, periodically checking to see if the beast had moved. It hadn't. The last time Prentiss had peered through the door's seam, it had been pacing back and forth a few feet away, tail twitching wildly, like an angry black cat. If the cat weighed half a ton, was the size of a small car, and had wings folded across its back.<p>

"What?" Wuornos asked absently. His eyes were closed and he seemed relaxed. Earlier, he'd taken off his undershirt, revealing one of those circular tattoos on his forearm that Prentiss had seen on more than one person in Haven, then patiently let Prentiss stanch the bleeding while he shrugged back into his jacket. His torn up ankle didn't seem to bother him at all. Not much of this had seemed to bother him so far, which was actually really unfair and annoying.

Meanwhile, Prentiss had a headache, and while she was getting used to the the weird emptiness of the church, the cramped windows that let in the light from only the left wall were starting to get on her nerves. She kept wanting to tilt her head to make it make sense. It was as if whatever wasn't visible in the original picture got left out of the interior design.

"Getting trapped in postcards." Prentiss probably shouldn't be so snippy, since another par tot her was desperately grateful she wasn't stuck in here alone, but this was a first for her.

Wuornos shrugged, blinking over at her. "There's almost always a trouble flaring up in Haven. It's not usually this inconvenient."

"Inconvenient?" Prentiss felt her eyebrows rise at his blasé tone, but Wuornos just shrugged again.

"Usually, if someone gets trapped, Audrey's the one who remembers it after she reverses the trouble. Though Duke and I did travel back in time once."

"This place is like a Star Trek episode. Or are you pulling my leg?" She narrowed her eyes at him. Even though she didn't know him well, this was weird enough that she would buy just about anything right now.

"1957. It wasn't as much fun as it sounds like. Mostly," said Wuornos, a small smile emerging, but he didn't elaborate. "What about you? What's the weirdest place you've been trapped?"

"I don't know about weird." Prentiss let her head bump back against the wall. "Reid and I were taken hostage by a cult in Colorado once." That had probably been the worst for the beating she took. "And about 8 months ago I faked my death and went into hiding."

Wuornos wasn't expecting that and a little more respect was in his eye when he asked, "Who were you running from?"

Prentiss shook her head, not wanting to get into it. "An old undercover op that came back to haunt me. The hardest part has actually been the paperwork to reverse my death certificate. Do you know how much documentation the state of Virginia requires to come back from the dead?"

"If it's anything like the state of Maine I'm guessing a lot," said Wuornos, smiling.

"It took me two months to convince the bank that I was who I said I was."

"At least the bank manager who you grew up with didn't think you suddenly didn't exist."

"Don't tell me." But Wuornos nodded. "This town." Prentiss let her head thunk against the wall. The noise was enough to for the creature on the other side of the wall stop its pacing. Prentiss froze, meeting Wuornos's eyes, and yep, he'd heard it to. They were both silent for a few minutes, listening, and Prentiss wasn't alone letting out a slow breath in relief when the beast started pacing again.

"So. What's the explanation for that?" she asked quietly. "Did Jean Kendall hide a whole menagerie in here, too?"

Wuornos was on his knees with his eye pressed against the door seam again. He sat back on his haunches, shaking his head. If it hurt his ankle, he didn't show it. "I'm betting that she was supposed to be the next victim," he said.

"She?"

Wuornos shrugged. "All the victims were female."

"You don't seriously believe that's a girl out there." Prentiss sat up too, her mind's eye staring right through the door at the creature outside. Even as she said it, however, she couldn't help but think it made perfect sense.

"You said you saw the victim at the house, right? There wasn't any sign of her when Morgan reported Kendall and her boyfriend on the run. She must have put her in here before jumping in the truck."

"But if the girl I saw is _that_," Prentiss pointed toward the door, "how would she have been caught in the first place?"

"Her trouble probably hadn't been triggered yet." Wuornos twisted back into a seated position. "Strong emotions usually set people off. What tips people over is different for everyone."

With assault, kidnapping, and the threat of rape and death, Prentiss would have thought the girl would have turned into a beast well before she'd found herself in the postcard with them. But then again, delayed shock, denial, simply better coping skills - any of that could have trumped the strong emotions Wuornos was talking about. He should know, he dealt with this everyday apparently.

"And your trouble?" Prentiss asked. Morgan's comments earlier about the Haven detectives' intimacy that took on a whole new light if Parker was helping Wuornos cope with his lack of sense of touch.

"Yeah?" Wuornos said, immediately wary.

Prentiss went ahead and asked, "What triggered yours?"

She got a long look, and then Wuornos changed the subject back to the girl-beast sitting outside the church door. "We need to calm her down. Try talking her back into being a person."

"Right." That topic was off limits. Prentiss took a deep breath and brought her focus back to the matter at hand. "She's been traumatized, and I doubt as a . . . whatever she is, she's in any place to listen to reason. Do you know her name?"

"Nope," Wuornos shook his head. "And no way for us to ask them back at the station."

"You guys really need to work on your magical abilities," Prentiss said, shaking her head. "We can try talking to her softly anyway. That can work with scared dogs."

She pushed to her feet and turned toward the door, looking through the seam. The girl-beast reminded Prentiss of tigers at the zoo, pacing back and forth with a twitching tail.

"Hello?" she called softly. "Can you hear me? My name is Emily."

The girl-beast barely paused, so Prentiss tried again a little louder this time - jumping back startled when the girl-beast spun and pounced right at the base of the church door, a sharp howl splitting their ear drums. It wasn't a friendly sound at all. And it didn't stop either. The girl-beast was batting at the door, her claws like nails down a chalkboard as she started trying again to get inside. The latch held, but they immediately slammed themselves against the door again to brace it anyway, just in case.

Wuornos's hand on her wrist steadied Prentiss, whose heart had started to race again. "I think I just made things worse," she said, her hands instinctively going to her ears.

"Yeah," Wuornos agreed blandly before shouting, "Hey! Knock it off!"

"What?"

"What?" Prentiss said, jerking her head toward Wuornos at the unexpected voice.

"What?" Wuornos was looking at her now like she was losing it. Outside the girl-beast stopped pawing on the door and keened louder.

"Did you hear that?" Prentiss half-shouted in his ear.

"The racket outside?" He gave her a disbelieving look.

"No . . . I thought I heard someone else. Did she hear me, you think?"

"Oh, she heard you," Wuornos said, wincing as the girl-beast howled again.

Prentiss shook her head, cautiously standing back up, because yeah, that screeching noise she was making didn't sound anything like calming down. "I must be hearing things."

"You said she - a woman's voice?" Wuornos turned toward her abruptly. His gaze was intent, startlingly so, and Prentiss took half a step back, wondering if she'd said something she shouldn't from the way he was looking at her.

"Yeah. It was probably nothing if you didn't hear it. Why?" she asked warily. When Wuornos started grinning, she didn't find it reassuring.

"I've got an idea," he said.

* * *

><p>"You sure you're up for this?" JJ shook her hair out of her face so she could see Morgan better. He didn't look so good. His shaved head made the goose egg above his left ear obvious.<p>

"I'm good," he said, a little testy. "I take harder hits from Reid in training."

"You're not reassuring me. Spence can pack a wallop," JJ smiled getting one from Morgan in return, which reassured her more than anything else. Ever since Prentiss had disappeared, he hadn't cracked a smile.

Right now he was wearing sunglasses and his vest, and the two of them were standing outside at the temporary command center set up on the west side of town. Two cruisers were parked just down the road, but there wasn't a lot of traffic anymore. Word had gotten out around town about the manhunt for Jeremy Rand.

"I'm fine, JJ. Really," Morgan said. "And we need to find this guy."

"The net's tightening. We've gotten his picture out and this is a small town," said Chief Hendrickson, joining them. "Someone will notice him sooner or later."

"I'd much prefer sooner to later," said Morgan. "We can at least try to narrow down where he might have holed up."

"He's lost his partner and he may want to try getting her back. Abusers are often possessive of the people they abuse," said JJ. "He may try to blend in with other people. Play the tourist card?"

"I sent officers around to the hotels already, but I can send them again," Hendrickson said.

"He didn't go for the hotels before," Morgan said. "He and Kendall stayed off the grid as much as they could. Garcia said he had a record for bar fighting. Maybe one of the local watering holes?"

"The Gull's closed during the day, but the Rust Bucket and the Shiny Scupper usually open around three," said Hendrickson. "Neither one will be crowded."

"It's a place to start," Morgan said.

Hendrickson radioed one of his men to check out the Shiny Scupper which was farther away, and then the three of them loaded up to check out the Rust Bucket downtown.

As they drove through Haven, JJ could already see the effects of the search. The streets were quiet and the people who were out were looking over their shoulders. Word had gotten around faster than she'd thought it would. When she said as much, Hendrickson shrugged.

"Vince and Dave put it out on twitter. Since they run the newspaper, half the town follows them."

"That's efficient," JJ supposed. "Do they talk about the troubles on there, too?"

"Not in so many words. They're the original secret keepers," Hendrickson said. "Turn here."

The Rust Bucket didn't look anything like how JJ expected it to. Instead of being rundown it had a fresh coat of paint and seemed to be in very good shape. Inside, a handful of patrons looked up when Hendrickson strode in as if he owned the place. He immediately went to talk to the bartender while JJ and Morgan looked around, but on first glance there was no sign of Jeremy Rand.

That's when the call came in from Hendrickson's radio. His men at the Shiny Scupper needed backup. Shots fired and an officer down.

* * *

><p>Reid was the lone agent manning the station with Laverne the dispatcher, when Crocker strode into the station with Jennifer.<p>

"Audrey?" Crocker called, and when he saw Reid and the skeleton crew, he asked, "Where is everyone?"

"Called out. They've found Jeremy Rand. Our perpetrator." Reid clarified at Crocker's blank look. "He's taken a hostage at an establishment called the Shiny Scupper."

Crocker gave him a twisted look. "Did you eat a dictionary, or something?"

"Ahh," Jennifer groaned, her face clenching up in clear pain, and both Crocker and Reid, immediately turned to her.

"Come here, sit down." Crocker grabbed chair in the middle of the station's open central room and ushered her into it.

"Are you all right?" Reid asked alarmed. Jennifer was clutching her head with her eyes scrunched shut.

"I'm fine," said Jennifer. Crocker guided her to the chair, and she was moving gingerly as she sat. "It's just a migraine."

"Do you get them often?"

"Sometimes. Not lately," she said, massaging her temples.

"It's not -"

"I'm not hearing anything," Jennifer said, and Reid wondered if she meant voices like her tone implied.

"Do you - " Reid began, but Crocker interrupted.

"Look, do you know what Audrey wanted?" he asked. "She called me down here, but as you can see, I really need to get Jennifer back to the boat. I'm definitely not going to ask her if she's taking down a psycho-killer right now."

"She didn't say," said Reid. Detective Parker had left the interrogation room with her phone already at her ear. Hotch and Rossi had followed, already talking about their next approach with Kendall when the call came in that Rand had been found. "They were trying to convince our female unsub to release Veronica Ellicott, Agent Prentiss and Detective Wuornos from the postcard." Reid kept his tone even, the words easier to say this time, now that this whole irrational situation was becoming normalized. He waited for Crocker's disbelief; a little part of him was relieved to see surprise on Crocker's face.

"Wait, she got Nathan too? He's trapped?"

It wasn't what he was expecting Crocker to say. Reid had to stop underestimating the weird in this town. Before Reid could speak, Crocker made a beeline for the detectives' office as if it were his own.

"So I am hearing them. But it doesn't make sense!" Jennifer said, catching Reid's attention before he could follow Crocker. He hesitated, not sure if he should make sure Crocker didn't touch anything or find out what Jennifer was talking about. She got up before he had to decide.

He asked, "Who are you hearing?" swallowing down how, because Reid was certain there wasn't a explanation for how.

"Where's Nathan?" Crocker met them at the office door, waving the postcard in his hand. "And what the fuck is that?" He pointed vaguely at the beast pacing outside the church door.

"Don't touch that!" Reid wanted to snatch it back, but Crocker pulled it out of reach, until Reid explained about their afflicted victim.

"That's what I'm hearing - she's crying," Jennifer said. "Or screeching, or something. It's like knives through my head."

"Do you hear Nathan?" Crocker asked, but Jennifer shook her head.

"It's not like before," she said. "And I'm not going to stand on my head to get a better signal!"

"Did I say anything about head stands?" said Crocker, testily.

"I can't hear anything except Veronica. I mean I thought I heard him, but -"

"Would you be able to hear our people if Veronica stopped?" Reid asked.

"Maybe? If they talk loud enough?" Jennifer squinted at him, a hand still pressed against her forehead.

"Can you talk to them?"

"That's not usually how it works."

"She's like a receiver," said Crocker. "Except without the knobs."

"If we can calm Veronica down, we could hear them," Reid said, ignoring Crocker who was shaking his head, and yes, Reid had heard him the first time, but this was a viable option. Or he felt it should be in this weird town. "At least try to talk to her!" he said to Jennifer.

Uncertainty was written on her face. "I don't really work well under pressure," she said, but she took a deep breath anyway, and Reid stopped himself from giving her meditation advice when Crocker put a heavy hand on his chest, blocking him physically as well as verbally.

"Give her a minute," he said softly. Crocker was a tall man with broad shoulders, but he dropped his hand after a moment, his focus entirely on Jennifer. "Here," he said, passing her the postcard.

Jennifer took it in both hands, closing her eyes as she inhaled deeply once more, opening them on the exhale and fixing on the postcard in her hands.

"Okay. I can do this. Just think clear thoughts. Nothing to it." Her pep talk wasn't very convincing, and after her second deep breath she said, "I can't do this with you two staring at me."

She retreated to the office, firmly shutting the door behind herself. Reid gave Crocker an awkward smile in the sudden quiet they were left with.

* * *

><p>Wuornos had lost it. That was the only explanation.<p>

"Jennifer!" he yelled at the top of his lungs to the roof of the church. "Jennifeeeer!"

"Who are you shouting at?" Prentiss jumped in when he paused for breath.

"Jennifer can hear through things sometimes," Wuornos said, catching his breath. "She hasn't been sleeping well for the past week. I think she might have been hearing the victims that Kendall kept in here."

"And you honestly think she'll be able to hear you through that?" Prentiss pointed to the door and the god-awful noise that was coming from the girl-beast outside. She was on the verge of losing it, too, if the screeching kept up.

"No." Wuornos's shoulders slumped and he hung his head back, staring at the ceiling. "It was worth a shot."

"Look, we'll just wait until she calms down." Prentiss said, hating being the bucket of cold water. "She has to eventually."

"Or she'll break down the door first and it won't matter."

Prentiss glanced at the church door, which had held so far. But the building was old, and oh yeah, fictional. Who knew how long it would last if the girl-beast started pawing at it again. Prentiss wasn't sure her legs could take much more of holding the door shut.

"Thanks for that depressing thought, Mr. Sunshine," she said.

"You're welcome."

Outside, the screeching howling continued. It had settled into a rhythm at least, which was a little easier to take. If she listened hard enough, Prentiss could almost hear a melody in it, kind of like a lullaby actually - wait.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

Wuornos cocked his head, face scrunched in concentration. "Guns'n Roses?"

That was it, _Sweet Child of Mine_. Prentiss laughed, because someone was singing to them. A smile crossed Wuornos's face, making him look years younger as he stared at the ceiling.

The howls outside seemed to taper, as if the girl-beast were confused, and Prentiss grabbed Wuornos's arm. "Come on, sing along," she said as the chorus came around again. Prentiss was rusty on the words, and Wuornos was slightly off-key, but they were able to carry it through. As they sang, finished out the song and then began again, the girl-beast quieted, the howls becoming intermittent, and then falling off by the time they finished the last chorus.

For a moment, there was absolute silence. Then, "Nathan?" a woman's voice came from vaguely above them.

"Jennifer!" Wuornos called back. "We hear you!"

"Oh, thank god!" said Jennifer, whoever, Jennifer was. "Are you okay?"

"We're both fine. Any luck getting us out of here?"

"The troubled woman is in custody. They're arresting the man right now. You just have to sit tight for now."

"That's it?" Prentiss asked. She'd been hoping for more.

"Nathan?" Jennifer said more loudly. "Are you still there?"

"I'm here!" Wuornos said.

"Nathan?" Jennifer's voice had a panicked edge to it. "Nathan?"

"We're here!" Wuornos shouted, but it was no use, Jennifer clearly couldn't help them, and her increasingly frantic calls, were making the girl-beast start up again - and then she was gone, lost under the sound of another screeching howl.

"Jennifer!" Wuornos shouted, thumping his fist against the wall. Which was the wrong thing to do because the girl-beast lost it then, crying and clawing at the door to the church with a frantic flurry it hadn't had before. The whole frame of the church shuddered under the onslaught, and the door was dangerously close to giving. Prentiss was getting tired of slamming her shoulder against it to keep it closed.

"Damn it!" Wuornos swore.

"If she keeps this up, this door is definitely not going to hold," Prentiss shouted over the noise.

Wuornos shot her a look that was half resigned and half angry. "They better get us out of here soon then," he said. "Know any good songs?"

"I'll let you pick," Prentiss said, hoping they could soothe the savage beast again before she broke through.

* * *

><p>An ambulance was already on the scene when Morgan, JJ, and Hendrickson arrived at the Shiny Scupper.<p>

"Stan, what's happening!" Hendrickson jumped out of his truck, leaving the door open. His uninjured officer hurried over and laid out the situation. Jeremy Rand was inside with a gun and three hostages.

"You ever negotiated a hostage situation before?" Morgan asked Hendrickson when they regrouped.

"You ever walked into a room where the bullets can't hit you?" Hendrickson asked in return.

"Excuse me?" Morgan was sure he hadn't heard right. He didn't know if he could handle what should have been the normal part of the investigation going into crazy town.

"Another one of these troubles?" JJ asked, a resigned note in her voice.

"Yep, mine," Hendrickson said, surprising them both. He tapped his vest with his knuckles. "I go in there, the hostages are safe unless he pulls a knife."

"You're kidding," Morgan said flatly, but Hendrickson just grimaced and shook his head.

"I wish I were. So Stan, you go cover the window and make sure Rand doesn't pull a knife. And since we don't have a SWAT team, Agent Morgan, you and Agent Jareu get to go around back until I distract him. And Morgan," Hendrickson went around to the back of his truck and took out the biggest crossbow Morgan had ever seen, "use this instead of a gun. Every bullet you fire will hit me. Got it?"

Feeling more than a little surreal, Morgan took the crossbow. The mechanism was fairly straightforward but he'd only have one shot.

"Be careful," he told Hendrickson, who nodded and trotted toward the front door.

The back door was easy enough to find, and JJ drew then holstered her weapon twice as they got into position before remembering.

"I feel naked," she said quietly.

"I feel overdressed," said Morgan hefting the crossbow. It was heavier than it looked, and the balance was not at all what he was used to. "Have I mentioned recently that this town is fucked up?"

"Not nearly enough," JJ said feelingly.

They eased through the door and tiptoed through the kitchen to the bar area. A swinging door with a circular window was all that separated them from Rand's field of view. Hendrickson was on the bull horn, demanding that Rand surrender himself, but Rand shouted back that he wouldn't let the people go until his girlfriend was released.

"Hostages are by the bar," Morgan said into the radio.

"Copy. Heading in now," Hendrickson replied.

JJ took up position by the hinge of the swinging door, ready to open it for Morgan as soon as they got the signal.

Opposite them, the main doors opened and Hendrickson stepped inside.

"Stay back!" Rand shouted, his gun swinging from the hostages to Hendrickson and back. "I'll kill them, each one of them. Don't think I won't."

"It's time to come in," Hendrickson said calmly. "Put the gun down."

"I warned you," Rand said, then he fired at the hostages - at the sharp, concussive bang, JJ shoved open the door and Morgan stepped through, firing the crossbow.

The bolt struck Rand's leg and he screamed, dropping the gun. Morgan glanced instinctively toward the hostages who were cowering against the bar but they were all scared, but fine. Only Hendrickson had fallen, and he was already pushing himself up. A shiny bullet was compressed in his vest.

* * *

><p>"A crossbow, huh?" Hotch said to Morgan.<p>

He and Dave had arrived with Parker in time to hear the shots fired and help take Rand into custody. Now the flurry of post-arrest clean up was going on, as the EMT's took Chief Hendrickson and the injured officer to the Medical Center and the remaining officers managed the growing crowd.

Morgan propped the weapon on his hip and grinned a little. "I kind of like it."

Hotch snorted. Of course he did. "Don't get used to it."

"What, you don't think the department would spring for medieval weaponry?"

"Dwight will kill you if you take that with you," Parker said, joining them. She had her radio in her hand and gestured with it toward the road. "All the check points have been opened up, and I've called off the search. Do you guys need anything else? Because I'd rather get back to the station and get our people back."

"No. Our job here is done," said Hotch. "Let's finish this."


	7. Chapter 7

As soon as the team returned to the station with Jeremy Rand in custody, Parker had grabbed Crocker and pulled him into Hendrickson's office. The two of them had been talking for ten minutes while Rand was processed, and Reid learned about Hendrickson's surprising affliction that had made the arrest easier than it should have been.

"If we hadn't been trying to communicate with Emily for the last hour, I wouldn't believe you," Reid said, shaking his head.

"Any luck there?" Morgan asked. He and JJ stood with Reid outside of the detectives' office. Over his shoulder Reid could see Hotch and Rossi talking quietly with each other by the board. Over JJ's shoulder he saw Jennifer watching Hendrickson's door with a worried frown on her face.

"Some," Reid said, pulling his attention back for the moment so he could fill them in.

Ever since Jennifer had come out of the office both triumphant at making contact and then frantic at the sight of Veronica Ellicott's beast form attacking the church door in the postcard, she'd been trying to regain her calm enough to try again. Crocker had tried talking her through controlling her breathing, then singing since that had apparently worked before. Reid had suggested cognitive exercises, but none of them had worked. Whenever Jennifer looked at the postcard again, all she heard was the beast and she couldn't break through.

"We should bring Veronica's mother in," JJ said. "Maybe she would be able to break through and calm her daughter down."

"I don't know if Veronica would be able to hear her in the postcard." Reid glanced at Jennifer who was still worriedly watching Hendrickson's door. "Let's ask. Jennifer!" He called, startling her.

"What? I mean yes?" She turned and visibly focused on them, coming over. "Hi," she said, waving shyly to Morgan and JJ.

"JJ had a thought. Would Veronica's mother be able to talk to her?" Reid asked.

"Like I did? No. It doesn't work like that." Jennifer shook her head. "No one else ever hears what I hear, and I've been the only one who could talk across boundaries. I mean, I've only done it once before, but there was no one else, so I assume it's just me. Sorry."

"It was a long shot," JJ said reassuringly. "I just wish there was some way to get through to her. Change her back."

"Well," Jennifer shifted, looking uncertain, but she went on anyway. "You could call her anyway? When we get them out, Veronica will probably come out in her winged cat form and we'll still need to calm her down."

"So you think we'll get them out okay?" Morgan asked, glancing down the hall to the where Kendall and Rand were being held. "No one seemed too sure of that a while ago."

"Yeah, well," Jennifer crossed her arms, another sign of discomfort, and this time she didn't continue.

Reid's eye narrowed. "Is this what Parker and Crocker are talking about? Do they have a way to get them out? Is it another of these troubles?"

"Sort of?" Which was as good as a yes, the way Jennifer's attention drifted back to the door.

"Come on, yes or no?" Morgan asked impatiently.

Jennifer clearly didn't want to answer, but fortunately for her, Crocker stormed out of the Chief's office then and he didn't look happy. Parker followed more slowly, and she didn't look happy either. The whole police station paused, watching them both, and clearly there was something that Reid and his team were missing because all the local cops seemed to be waiting for a sign of some sort. Crocker glared at everyone who stared too long, then went to where Jennifer had been working at the central and picked up the postcard.

Jennifer joined him, touching his arm tentatively and not moving closer until he grabbed her hand.

"Duke," Parker's voice broke the collectively held breath. "It's Nathan."

"I know," he said. His gaze fell on Reid and the others. "You get to tell them," he said, handing the postcard to Jennifer, then heading for the holding cells. None of the local cops stopped him.

"Tell us what?" Rossi asked, coming over with Hotch.

"We can get them out." Parker crossed her arms across her chest. "But you're going to have to cut us a lot of slack."

* * *

><p>Hotch didn't like the plan. Not one bit. Dave argued against it. Morgan thought the ruse would work. Hotch wasn't sure that Parker and Crocker were bluffing. But he didn't see an alternative.<p>

The three of them stood at the observation window as Parker and Crocker entered the interrogation room where Jean Kendall was being held. They had their game faces on, and despite his non law-enforcement status, it didn't look like this was Crocker's first rodeo.

"Hello, Jean," Parker said. "We're here to talk about the people in the postcard."

Kendall sat back, her body language speaking of someone in control of the situation. "It's like I told you before. I'll let them go when you let me and Jeremy go," she said.

"No. No, see, that doesn't work for us," said Parker, taking the seat across from Kendall, and sitting back, just as relaxed and in control. It was a little disturbing to watch, and Kendall sensed it too, though she tried to hide it.

"You don't have a choice," she said, but her eyes flickered to Crocker as she spoke, and he didn't miss it.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked calmly, a slightly mocking tone in his voice that suggested that Kendall should.

"No," she said.

"I'm a troubled person," Crocker drawled. "Just like you. Do you want to know what my trouble is?"

Kendall stayed silent, held herself still.

Parker kept up her dead-eye stare, and Crocker smiled a shark's smile that was all teeth and completely at odds with his behavior earlier in the main room. He smiled like he smelled blood in the water.

"My trouble" he said, setting his hands on the table and leaning into her space, "is to take away troubles. Do you want to know how it works?"

Kendall's eyes didn't leave him, and she leaned back when he leaned closer, reaching out.

"What's he doing?" Dave asked aloud, echoing Hotch's thoughts. When Parker had presented her plan earlier, she'd said the Crocker could absorb other people's troubles if he killed them. They were supposed to be playing bad cop, unsupervised cop.

But Crocker had taken ahold of one of Kendall's hands, and from his pocket he drew a short-bladed knife. Too quick to stop, he slashed it across Kendall's palm, opening a bloody line as she gave a terrified scream.

Hotch was already moving - this had gone too far. But when he and Dave burst into the interrogation room, Parker was standing to block them.

Crocker was in Kendall's face. He'd let go of her hand and grabbed her by the throat. "You want to reconsider letting my friends go?"

"What's going on here?" Hotch said in his best command voice, sidestepping Parker, but when he tried to pull Crocker off, Crocker lashed out, sending him into the wall, hard. Harder than any man should have been able to push another. The wind was knocked out of him, and Hotch struggled to breathe for a moment but his diaphragm wouldn't catch air for a good ten seconds. Then he nearly stopped breathing again when he saw Crocker's eyes - they had changed, white around the pupil.

Parker had Dave by his jacket and was whispering something in his ear.

Crocker ignored everyone except Kendall, who was terrified, unable to look away. "You think they can stop me from ending you?" Crocker stage whispered. "You have five seconds to agree to let my friends out of your postcard. Four. Three."

"Yesyesyesyesyes," Kendall spluttered, crying now. "I'll let them go, I'll let them go."

"Good." Crocker released her and shoved her back into her chair. When he turned, his eyes were back to normal, his hands, bloodstained. "Get the postcard," he told Parker. He circled around behind Kendall's chair. "I'm just gonna stand right here where you can't see me while you do your thing."

"Agent." Parker came over and offered Hotch a hand up. He and Dave followed her out silently, but as soon as the door closed -

"What the hell was that?" Hotch demanded. "You said -"

"You assumed," Parker cut in. She was half a foot shorter than him, but she didn't back down. "We caught your serial killer your way. We're going to deal with our troubles our way."

"But you can't just torture a suspect," Dave said. "That makes us no better than them."

"Maybe not," said Parker, "but she's going to return our people and Veronica, and that's all I have time to care about." She looked between both of them. "The troubles aren't kind. They kill people. And sometimes we have to do terrible things to make them stop. Kendall has total control over who goes in and out of that postcard. Total. No loopholes. Without her help, we have exactly one option for getting them out. If I have to choose, I'm choosing the three people she victimized."

Hotch closed his mouth on his first response, a knee-jerk reaction to being caught off guard. He didn't like it anymore than he had liked what he'd thought had been the plan in the first place. But if Parker was right - and Hotch thought she was - she had a solid point. He'd choose Prentiss over a Kendall. Dave would, too.

Hotch gave Parker a small nod. "Fine. Let's get this over with," he said.

Parker lingered a moment. "Not going to pull us up on charges, I hope," she said, a calculating note in her voice.

Hotch glanced back at the interrogation room door. "Would Crocker really kill her?" he asked.

"If she doesn't let her victims go, then they die in the postcard with no food or water."

"Then he would." Hotch saw the truth in her eyes. He'd probably done it before. How else would he know how his trouble work, Hotch wondered darkly.

Parker tilted her head then headed back to the main room without answering.

* * *

><p>The girl-beast had stopped screaming finally, and she was only half-heartedly pawing at the door every now and then. That was improvement that Prentiss would take.<p>

"Beatles next?" she asked, the words painful on the back of her throat. Wuornos shrugged, looking as tired as Prentiss felt. It had been hours since they'd been trapped here, and they'd spent the last thirty minutes singing at the top of their lungs.

"I wish we knew her name," Wuronos said. "I wish we could just talk to her." He'd tried after the first song, but that had only set the girl-beast off again. When Emily tried a few minutes later, she hadn't succeeded either.

Prentiss thwapped his shoulder lightly with the back of her hand. He didn't startle or move, and she said, "Come on. She's getting restless," to get his attention.

She started up _Eight Days a Week_ since that seemed apropos to the case, and after a few beats, Wuornos started humming along, joining in on the chorus.

And that was what they were doing when Prentiss suddenly found herself flat on her ass in a tiny little room with Wuornos stumbling on top of her and the girl-beast screaming on top of him. Prentiss ducked, covering her head with her arms, trying to roll away. Wuornos was shielding her, and the first thing that registered in the messy loud confusion was that he was bleeding again, this time from his arm.

"Nathan!" someone shouted, and then there were hands on Prentiss, pulling her back - Hotch and Parker in the door of what she now recognized as an interrogation room. Wuornos and Crocker, from the Grey Gull, were holding off the girl-beast, though Prentiss wasn't sure how, while Rossi ran in with keys to the cuffs of Jean Kendall at the interrogation table. Then Prentiss was out, Rossi and Kendall were out, and Crocker was pushing Wuornos out before quickly following and slamming the door shut.

They all stared at each other in stunned silence for a minute. Then Prentiss turned to Hotch, who still held her by the shoulders, and gave him a hug. "Oh, thank god," she said with feeling. "I was worried we'd be stuck there forever."

"Glad you're back," Hotch said hugging her close for a moment before letting her go.

Across the hall, Wuornos was getting a hug from Crocker. When they broke apart, Parker got her hands on him, and Wuornos tucked his head into her neck, all the tension and stress of the last few hours melting away as he melted into her. Prentiss exchanged a glance with Hotch; looked like Morgan was right about those two.

Clapping, cheers and congratulations from the Haven police officers greeted them when they entered the main room of the police station. Laverne the dispatcher gave Wuornos a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and a number of people patted Prentiss on the back.

But it was her teammates she was looking for. Nothing felt so good as Rossi pulling her in for a hug, or Reid's strong arms around her shoulders.

"We thought we'd lost you again," Reid said quietly in her ear. "I'm so glad you're back."

"Can't get rid of me so easily," Prentiss replied, holding him tight a second longer before stepping back. "Where are JJ and Morgan?"

"Morgan's fine," Reid reassured her. "He and JJ are on their way. Someone else wants to talk to you first." Grinning, he handed her his phone with Garcia on the other end.

"Em!" Garcia said immediately. "Tell me all is well in the world!"

"Well, there's a girl still transformed into a beast in an interrogation room right now, but I'm back in the right place so no complaints here."

"For the record, I hope you took pictures because you do not understand how hard it's been for me to wrap my head around the weirdness that is Haven, Maine, from 600 miles away."

"I'd send you a postcard, but I'm kind of off postcards forever now," Prentiss said, and even though she was smiling, she meant it one hundred percent.

Across the room, Hotch was waving at them from the door to the detectives' office, so Prentiss cut the call short with promises that she wouldn't get kidnapped ever again.

"Please tell me, we got our guy and we can go home now," she said. Prentiss was tired and hungry, her throat hurt and all she wanted was a hot coffee and bed.

Rossi patted her on the arm, then gently looped it through his elbow. "We got our guy," he said, "and I'm pretty sure Hotch found you something to eat."

Granola bars and coffee were all they were cracked up to be. Prentiss let her attention focus on them while Reid quietly filled her in on everything that had happened while she and Wuornos had been in the postcard.

After plying her with sustenance, Rossi and Hotch went to discuss what to do about Veronica with the Haven police, so that's who she was expecting when the door to the detectives office opened a few minutes later.

"Emily!" Morgan rushed in, and Prentiss was barely on her feet when he swept her up in a fierce hug. Prentiss held on tight. When JJ joined them, and Morgan didn't let go, Prentiss opened up her arm and pulled her and Reid in for a group hug.

"You gotta stop disappearing on us," Morgan said eventually.

"I'll try." Prentiss couldn't offer more than that. In the meantime she held on to her friends, and that was enough.

* * *

><p>Mrs. Ellicott stood in the observation room looking in on her transformed daughter with a lost expression on her face. JJ's heart went out to her. If it were Henry in there? Well, JJ had no idea how she would cope, let alone be able to believe it at all.<p>

"There's a family story, about Uncle Joshua." Mrs. Ellicott's voice was calm and steady. "One day he went out hunting, only he didn't come back. He was gone for days and days, and we sent out search parties. The last person to see him alive saw him arguing with Dewitt Nigels over the property line. His cows had gotten through a hole in the fence again - they were always going back and forth - and that's what they were arguing over. Only this time Dewitt Nigels had shown up with his two sons. Dewitt thought that was the end of it, but only one son returned with him to the house when they went their separate ways. So the search parties searched for his son too, and they found him. He was dead, clawed to death by an awful beast that'd he'd shot in the chest with Uncle Joshua's hunting rifle. They had killed each other."

Parker, standing on Mrs. Ellicott's other side, said, "Veronica's not lost in the woods. She's not being hunted. She's in there, and she's waiting for you to call her home."

Veronica-the-beast was pacing, like a tiger in the zoo. Every few turns she'd partially unfurl her wings and let out a piercing screech, which made them all flinch.

"What if there's nothing of her left?" Mrs. Ellicott asked.

"You're her mother," JJ said. "She'll hear you. She's just scared and lost. Singing seemed to help before. Do you have any songs that she may remember from her childhood?"

"Why her childhood?"

"That's when the deepest bonds are made," JJ said. "Songs she was attached to then will be important to her and deeply held in her emotional memory."

Mrs. Ellicott was quiet for a minute.

"What can it hurt to try?" Parker asked.

For a moment, JJ wasn't sure Mrs. Ellicott would. The fear of trying and failing was powerful. She glanced over at Parker, but Parker was fully focused on Mrs. Ellicott, and JJ watched the detective take her hand.

"This will work," Parker said. "You won't lose her."

It was what Mrs. Ellicott needed. She nodded, and when Parker hit the intercom she began singing a lullaby that JJ hadn't heard before. It was slow and silly, full of llamas wearing pajamas and whales with polka dot tails.

Veronica-the-beast didn't stop pacing immediately, but she did look up, looking for the sound. After the second verse she paused and let out a questioning cry. After the third verse she sat down on her haunches and lifted her head up. The sound that came out wasn't a screech, but something still strangled and harsh.

Mrs. Ellicott paused. "I need to go in there." The look on her face was no longer lost. JJ didn't even think twice before nodding, and Parker was already reaching for the door to let her through.

When she stepped inside the interrogation room, Mrs. Ellicott started singing again, and when she reached out to stroke Veronica-the-beast's cheek, between on verse and the next she was holding Veronica-the-girl.

* * *

><p>With Veronica returned safely to normal and Kendall and Rand safely locked up in separate cells for the night, all the energy that had kept everyone on task throughout the day fell away. Outside, the shadows were getting longer. Hendrickson showed up from the hospital for long enough to thank the volunteer search parties and send his officers home.<p>

He came into the detectives' office where Hotch and Reid were taking down the board and bagging anything that may be needed for the court case. The rest of the team had already left the station in search of dinner.

"Agent Hotchner." Hendrickson had an undamaged vest on again over a long-sleeved henley and jeans. He held out his hand, which Hotch took. "Thank you for your help on this one."

"Of course," Hotch said, "though I think we should be thanking you for all you and your people did too. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes . . ."

"That's Haven for you," Hendrickson said with a smile that held as much fondness for his crazy town as anything else.

"So what happens now? Jean Kendall can't be kept away from pictures forever," Hotch said. It was the one thing that he kept turning over in his head. How would she be controlled - could she be?

"We'll find a place for her," said Hendrickson vaguely. "Rand was the real killer, and fortunately for us, he's not troubled."

"She's not going to _disappear_, is she?"

Hendrickson frowned at the implication. "We take care of our own."

Hotch didn't like the sound of that. He fixed Hendrickson with a look and asked, "Crocker?"

"No." Hendrickson's reply was short and sharp. "Duke wouldn't, even if I asked. Which I wouldn't, because we take care of our own, and for better or worse, that's what Kendall is. "

That didn't exactly reassure Hotch. "Troubled." It was a different euphemism, certainly better than cursed. "How will this play out in town? The fact that one of the unsubs was troubled?"

Hendrickson shrugged. "One of the victims was, too. Until the troubles end, it'll always be something."

"You can't keep this hidden forever," Reid said.

"You can't a mange this on your own either," added Hotch. "You barely have enough resources -"

"We do just fine," Hendrickson cut him off.

"And when it spills outside you're borders?"

"We don't let it. And if you think getting the FBI involved is going to help, it's not," he went on. "Bringing an army here won't stop the troubles."

"But you would have people who could help you manage them," said Hotch.

Hendrickson still wasn't convinced. "And the scientists who follow that want to experiment on us? The politicians who will want to lock us up for everyone's safety? You saw the crowd this morning. We've got enough of that already - and the rest of us will fight to make sure that doesn't happen. You want to bet the lives of your agents against us?"

Hotch didn't miss that Hendrickson included himself among the potential resistance. He probably wasn't wrong about the fallout either. Hotch would have to put any proposal for helping Haven into writing. His report would get read by fifty directors, all the way up the chain, and whomever else they saw fit to inform.

He let out a breath and shook his head. "No. I don't imagine that would do anyone any good."

"Will the troubles ever end?" asked Reid.

But it didn't look like Hendrickson had an answer. He shrugged again. "We know a little bit about how they started. I'll let you know when we figure it out how to get rid of them for good. Until then, I'll send you a copy of our official reports that keep the troubles out of it. Should help you keep from being laughed out of the FBI, too."

"Thank you," said Hotch. Hendrickson nodded and shook Hotch's hand, then left them to it. Hotch sighed, feeling as if, despite successfully closing the case, they were going to be leaving it half open.

Beside him, Reid held up one of the postcards holding the body of the first victim from Camden. "Should we see if we can convince Jean Kendall to return the bodies?"

Hotch took it, weighing closure for the families versus the extensive lying that would be needed to explain where they were found and where the related evidence was without causing more undue grief if it all fell apart. "I'll bring it up with Hendrickson before we leave in the morning." This time, he'd let the locals decide.

* * *

><p>"So, Reid, what's the final score?" Emily asked the next morning. The SUVs were packed and the four of them were waiting outside the police station for Hotch and Rossi to finish up the paperwork before they headed for the airport. "How does Haven rate as a vacation spot?"<p>

Reid gave her a sideways look but gamely took the bait. "Scores well on scenic beauty and relaxing views. The constant wind is a strike against it, and so is the unfortunate habit of the citizenry to manifest supernatural powers."

"The fishing is supposed to be good," Derek said.

"Weren't you going to charter a boat before we left?" Emily seemed to recall something like that coming up before everything took a left turn.

"Not anymore," Derek shook his head emphatically, wincing. "Who knows what would happen to me out there."

"Mostly your run of the mill smugglers and fishermen," said Parker from behind them. She and Wuornos came down the steps from the station. Wuornos held a cup of coffee, Parker held a set of car keys. "The ocean's big enough you probably wouldn't run into the rest," she added, grinning.

"I don't even want to know," said Derek, shaking his head. "No offense, but your town is messed up."

"Thanks. We noticed," said Wuornos. His sleeves were rolled up and he had a bandage wrapped around his forearm just under the circular tattoo. Now that Emily could guess what it meant, she wondered if he wore it as a badge or a warning.

It took her a moment to notice that he was holding something out to her. "What's this?" she asked even though she could see it was a postcard. The postcard. The little church that had sheltered them, the rolling hills, and the town and sea in the background.

"I was gonna burn it, but I thought I'd see if you wanted to help," Wuornos said with a small smile. He held out a lighter in his other hand and held it out to Emily, too.

"Is this how you deal with the troubles when they're done?" JJ asked as Emily accepted the lighter and flicked it open.

"We also drink a lot," said Parker, wryly.

"Yeah. I know how that goes," Derek said, grinning back.

Everyone gathered around Emily who didn't hesitate. She held the corner of the card to the flame and smiled as it burned, letting it fall to the sidewalk. When she looked up, Wuornos was watching the postcard burn intently. Sensing her eyes on him, or something, he looked up and this time his smile was genuine and held the same relief she felt at watching their former prison disintegrate into ash.

"That felt good," she told him. She was pretty sure she was still going to have nightmares, but at least she could wake up knowing the postcard was gone.

"Catharsis," Reid offered.

"Something like that." Emily let out a breath.

"Well, we've got to get going," Parker said. "Somebody turned their front porch into lasagna."

"Lasagna?" JJ asked skeptically, but it was easy to see that Parker was serious.

"It never stops, does it," Derek said.

Both detectives shook their heads. "Nope," said Wuornos. "We get all the fun cases."

Emily knew that feeling, too, but at least their cases, difficult as they could be, were grounded in reality.

"You ever need any recommendations for good music, let me know," she told Wuornos, getting an exasperated eye roll and a firm handshake as they said their goodbyes. Then they were off to deal with a pasta porch, and Hotch and Rossi were leaving the station so they were ready to go, too.

"All set?" asked Morgan.

"All set," said Hotch. "Writing this one up is going to be interesting.

* * *

><p>The End<p> 


End file.
